Alfred Lord Tennyson has a famous
quote regarding love lost by writing “It’s better to have loved and lost, than
to have never loved at all.” That
applies to many forms of relationships and reasons for their loss. I’ve written a few blog posts about losing my
wife to breast cancer. Lately,
some well meaning folks have asked why I’ve never been interested in another
relationship? The simple answer is that
we had a special bond and it lasted for 44 years. We were created in our Creator’s image and
God is relational. I enjoy
relationships.
Perhaps if our relationship had been
shorter and we had been younger with the prospect of many more years ahead
things might be different. That was the
case with one conversation where a therapist had told a younger widow that
perhaps her deceased husband had taken her with him and she was mentally
obligated to stay. Our wedding vows do
say “till death do us part” which frees us from being obligated to stay by
ourselves. Others seem to have a mission
to pair up those who have lost spouses so that they can help heal the grief
that accompanies a loss, but that needs to be at the request of the survivor.
When we were dating in college, I ran
across a comment that “the true test of love is to pause and consider losing
it.” That validated our relationship for
me and the ultimate test is losing it. Another
observation is that “loving and losing differ by only one letter, but are
forever separated by life and death”. It’s
been said that “ordinary people fall in love but soulmates rise in love”.
It’s
pretty obvious when you look around that being married isn’t necessarily
synonymous with being soulmates. A soulmate has your back and has your heart. A
mate is one of a matched pair. You spend years together through all of life’s
mountains and valleys, all of life’s triumphs and failures, all of life’s joy
and tragedy. And all the while, you are two independent and sometimes head
strong individuals who have resolved to become one flesh, one soul—one day at a
time. That fusion of spirit is tempered in the crucible of everyday life when
it does indeed many days seem like it’s you and me against the world. It’s been
said that we are not a body with a soul, but a soul with a body. Our
life’s work is to develop the soul and make it whole through our interaction
with our creator and one another. And
soulmates never give up on each other.
Loved
ones who go before us are forever woven into the fabric of our being and
forever influence who we are and how we carry on. Of course, we never forget and we are forever
changed. We rebuild and are whole again but never the same. We wouldn’t expect
nor want to be the same. When life turns
surreal, it's one foot ahead of the other, one day at a time, trusting in the
providence of a greater power.
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