GIVE LOVE A CHANCE

Last week I sat and ruminated one afternoon, and I’m not talking about chewing my cud, but rather contemplating about how the world has changed since my wife and I set up shop some forty-seven years ago. I thought about how people’s values have changed when it comes to the commitments we made to those we once pledged our love and fidelity. My parents, and my wife’s parents, gave both of us good examples of how to live our married life, and I think our children received those same examples from my wife and I-- but for the generation now going out into the world, it seems to have been compromised-- and I’m not sure why. Maybe the outside pressures of this fast changing world have just become so great, that all of that helpful mentoring has been lost in the rush. Soon I fear, it will be lost forever.

I’m not trying to be anybody’s moral compass here, and I realize that some marriages were never meant to be, but we seem to have an epidemic of broken hearts, broken promises, and broken marriages. Kids caught in the middle, are torn between moms and dads who seem to find it easier to start over, then try to fix what has gone wrong. It’s become almost a socially acceptable thing to do and can only lead in the long run, to more of the same. In effect, it’s a sort of me first attitude

I remember a song that B J Thomas sang a while back called “Whatever Happened to Old-Fashioned Love. I quote a verse from that song because it says it better than I could ever say it.

 “Whatever happened to old-fashioned love, the kind that would see you through? The kind of love my Momma and Daddy knew.

Yes, what ever happened to old-fashioned love, the kind that would last through the years? Through the trials, through the smiles, and through the tears.”

Kind of makes you take pause doesn’t it.

As a small boy I used to see the twinkle in my Grandfather’s eye, whenever he would talk about Grandma. I guess I never fully understood back then why he was so proud of what they had together. But as the years passed, and my feelings deepened for the one I chose, I understood all to well where he was coming from. I found that looking out for number one didn’t always mean me, being number one. To those of you who are having problems, I say this. If there was love to begin with, give love a chance. It’s the most powerful emotion the human mind possesses and not something you want to miss out on. If you have children, isn’t that really what you would wish for them someday?