Boy-meets-girl love story begins in high school, complete with shirts, ties, and knee socks.

She’s 17. He’s 18.

They fall deeply, ridiculously, intensely in love. The easy kind of love.

3 weeks in they talk marriage.

More certainty in her bones than for any other decision in her life.

Marriage at the tender 19 and 20 years of age.

It’s better than they had ever dared to hope.

Travel and nesting and learning and living and enjoying each other.

Reality rudely intruding at times with humanity’s selfishness, but love still greater.

Finally, the arrival of a new kind of love in the form of a babe.

With it comes a new kind of stress and challenge to the union. The need to work harder.

Still love. But the hard-work kind of love.

The easy love fades into oblivion.

8 years of marriage later and there are two kids, a minivan, and a whole lot of unresolved distance.

Heavy responsibilities, sleepless nights, long working hours, unmet expectations, unfair expectations, and still… love?

But love doesn’t come easy anymore.

Love is now on the back burner.

Snide remarks and grumpy attitudes rule the roost as selflessness takes a backseat.

And the love feels different.

Trapping.

Heavy.

Lukewarm.

And yet, hopeful.

There it is, in the fiber of their being, a smouldering and undeniable love for each other.

As their hands brush in the kitchen, and he kisses his bride.

She fearfully lets some of the walls come down enough to really kiss him back.

And she offers words of understanding and appreciation, and a foot rub.

And he gets up early with the kids so she can sleep in.

They love now with intent. With action. With selfless choices.

With a daily surrender to self.

They trudge along in the thickness of life continuing the climb until they are rewarded with the view from the top.

Stopping to take a breath when the sun breaks through the clouds and gives perspective again.

Denying the urge to live for self and instead living for another. For love. For life.

Until it’s second-nature. Until it’s easy again.

And at the end they rock in their chairs on the front porch with grey hair while holding hands and reminiscing.

Of how they loved and loved and loved.

And how that love looked different depending on the season.

Sometimes difficult to see through the haze of humanity.

But sometimes felt with passion, known with certainty, and enjoyed with abandon.

The sometimes-glimpse of heaven.

They never gave in to hopelessness. They knew that it was worth the work.

Until it was easy again.

They never stopped loving.