Real Love - The One Year Love Talk Devotional for Couples
Real Love
Love never fails.
1 Corinthians 13:8, NIV
“Real isn’t how you are made. It’s a thing that happens to you,” said the toy horse. “When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real.”
This old toy horse in Margery Williams’s classic children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit, squarely identifies the fact that we are most real when we are most known and loved. It’s synergistic: The more real we become, the more love we experience. And the more love we experience, the more real we become.
The toy rabbit didn’t know real rabbits existed. He thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself. “And he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles.” The rabbit kept authenticity at bay through his fear of being found out. He never wanted to risk being really known. And yet authenticity is the only way to be loved.
That’s the irony. We fear that being known will lead to rejection. It will get our vulnerable hearts kicked across the floor. But it is only by being known that our hearts are truly loved.
C. S. Lewis, as he so often does, puts his finger on a truth that resonates:
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping your heart intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable irredeemable. . . . The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.a
Nobody wants a hard-boiled heart. And yet each time we pass up an opportunity to be known by our spouse, we face a greater danger than having our heart being rejected. We risk a hardened heart that even guards against the risk of love. And for a marriage to be truly healthy and thriving—for both partners—each partner much take the risks of being known and of being a safe place to be known.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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The One Year Love Talk Devotional for Couples
By Dr. Les Parrott and Dr. Leslie Parrott
Tyndale
$7.99
