Love (look out, this post is a little over the moon)

"Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, 'You owe me.' Look what happens with a love like that. It lights up the whole sky."

- Hafiz

I just read this quote on my friend Nathan's blog and I had to pass it on.  It feels a little kismetty that I read it this morning, because I've been thinking a LOT about love and its existence.  Whether people really believe in it.  And I let some things, recently, shake that belief a little. 

 

But here's the thing.  I believe in it.  I believe in love.  True love. Soul mates. Love of one's life. Whatever you want to call it.  I have believed in this love since I was twelve years old.  I remember because when I was twelve, I made a list of five things I wanted to do before I died.  Here it is:

 

1. Fall in love

2. Join the Peace Corps

3. Make a record.

4. Write a novel

5. Hold a monkey

 

I have done the first three (well I made a CD--there weren't CDs yet when I made that list).  I am working on number four. And I have a reasonable belief that I can manage number five at some point in my life. 

 

Anyway, I do believe in it.  And it doesn't mean I believe in the 'happily ever after' fairy tale kind. I believe in working your ass off to make relationships work. And I believe sometimes you work and it isn't enough.  I know people marry for reasons other than love, or that sometimes love can grow from friendship. I know there is all kinds of love.  I know a lot of people going through divorces right now, going through troubled times.  And Tad and I have certainly struggled.  We struggled HARD in the beginning of our relationship.  There was a time I wasn't sure we'd make it.  And this month, we'll have been married for only nine years. That's just the age of a child, in terms of marriage.  It's really relatively new still.   And we'll keep working, and we'll run across trouble and I know I can't know what will happen in the future.  But I know that now, when he calls me in the middle of the day or I see him unexpectedly...my heart still leaps.

 

Both my parents recently and independently of each other, told me not to stop believing in it.  So I will listen to my parents.  And to myself and keep believing in the kind of love that lights up the sky.