you got me and Jesus

this is [kind of] a love story.

jesse and i celebrated our fourth anniversary last thursday. our first date was exactly one year before that. it was a weird time for both of us when we met. i was still struggling to get over a guy i thought i was going to marry (but had never met) after five years of deliberate singleness. contrary to my situation, jesse was just getting out of a five-year relationship.

my lifestyle at that time was something partly inspired by elisabeth elliot's passion and purity and partly by a preacher i heard my freshman year of college. i guess you could say it was also inspired by the precepts in joshua harris's book, i kissed dating goodbye, though i never read it.

i didn't even want to be in a room alone with jesse when we first started talking. the first time we sat alone together i had my friend who knew me really well call a few times to keep me accountable. we had been talking for a few weeks when jesse said something like "i guess i should take you out some time." you probably think that is hilarious if you know him. i think it is hilarious even now. even though he wore cowboy boots on our first date and i ate calf fries (what was i thinking?) we still fell in love.

it's hard to stay "in love" through a lifetime. what matters is that we make it in fulfilling our vows even when the odds are stacked against us. what matters is that every day we strive to be the kind of love that lasts.

Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also many things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all....In fact, the state of being in love usually does not last....But of course ceasing to be 'in love' need not mean ceasing to love. Love....is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by the grace which both partners ask and receive from God....They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be 'in love' with someone else. 'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep their promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.  

 Excerpt from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

 "Someone loves you even when you don't think so...don't you know...you got me and Jesus by your side, through the fight. You will never be alone, on your own, you got me and Jesus."