shallow men have more fun

When you are married to the love of your life for twenty years you want to do something special for her. So to celebrate our anniversary I booked a bed and breakfast on Tybee Island. The brochure looked great. A little yellow house tucked beneath the shadow of a mammoth tree draped with Spanish moss.

Just outside the frame and immediately past the advertising though, sits the rest of the story. The bed and breakfast is hemmed on two sides by a nursing home. It gets worse. The advertised "beach access" leads you straight to a sign that tells you death awaits those who enter the water. No joke.

Life is grand if you stay within the frame. But venture out, and it gets scary.

Kelle was thinking about what sits outside our frame when we were eating dinner at Corleone's last night.

"What are we going to do the next twenty years that we didn't do the first twenty years?" Kelle asked.

"Have surgery," I replied.

"No, really. We've had full lives. We've done just about everything we desired to do. What's next? And why aren't you being your normal, contemplative, reflective self?"

"I'm practicing being shallow," I said.

"Might I ask why?"

"Because shallow men have more fun. They don't consider what's next or the brevity of their days. They just hang out in the moment and enjoy life. It feels pretty good. You ought to try it."

"And when, exactly, did you decide to be a shallow man?" Kelle asked.

"About the time I gave up on church," I said.

"That was a long time ago. So why the sudden change?"

"Took a while to work its way to the surface."

Sigh...

The truth is, I was doing a little reflecting.

I was considering the nature of love and how it deepens and changes expression over time. I thought about how many different ways you can love a person.

There was the frame of our courtship which was all a fire with romantic pursuit. There was that frame where the kids were little and we were learning to walk inside the good works the Lord had prepared for us since before the foundation of the world. (That would be raising our children in the Lord).

Then there is this frame in which we now sit. The children are transitioning to adulthood. Rebekah has her own apartment. Caleb is considering colleges. Joshua is stretching into his man world. Our baby, Jonathan, turns 13 in a few weeks.

Cash is flowing. Schedules are stuffed. Life is exciting and full and moving fast. But what about the next frame, the one just outside the picture on the brochure?

For this short window of time, inside this frame, everything is just fine. Better than fine. I'm enjoying a wonderful dinner with my soul mate. And I am discovering that love grows to fill whatever frame you're in. It deepens and widens and nestles into the crevices of the architecture that surrounds you.

Love is so much more than affection and feelings. It shows itself in commitment and valor, in patience and empathy. Love is bigger than the frame.

True love, the kind that Jesus displayed for us, stretches through time and space and reaches through sin and death to grab hold of us in a vice grip that never lets go.

As Jesus said, "I will never leave you. I will never forsake you."

His grace is sufficient for whatever frame we're in.

 

  

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

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