True Love

(image from David Winters, create.lds.org)

It was an ordinary day that I set out to the local craft store, Hobby Lobby, with three small children in tow.  As usual it was a cold Minnesota morning as I lovingly herded my crew from the parking lot to the store.  That is when an older couple caught my eye.  

They must have been near ninety years old, both frail and slightly bent over.  The husband loving supported his wife and helped her walk one slow step at a time.  There was a sense of care and concern in his every move.  He helped her with the door.  In the minutes that I watched them their lifetime flashed through my mind and I envisioned them as a young couple happily wed.  Now several decades later they were wrinkled and weak.  Once quick and busy they were now slow, but they were together.  I am sure they had cared for each other for years and years.  Why had he lovingly helped her to the craft store?  Was she thoughtfully making a gift for a grandchild? Whatever the reason he brought her because he loved her.


The image of the couple has been etched in the corners of my memory for years now.  I resolved that that is what I want.  It is wonderful to see a young couple blissfully in love looking to the future, but I was filled with a sense of awe when I saw this old couple that had truly proven their love for each other over a lifetime of joys and challenges.  I want to be old, wrinkled, and bent over and be able to hold my husband’s hand and laugh at life's memories and cry over the challenges.  I want to have a marriage that the roots are so deep it will last to eternity . . . because when all is said and done that is what matters.


Over the eleven years that my husband and I have been married I can see how our love for each other continues to grow as our memories and experiences are woven together in an eternal bond that doesn't end.