Crazy Love

I was awake off and on last night, and three songs kept weaving their way through my mind. The gentle, lyrical Aaron Neville song Love, Love, Love, Love, Crazy Love. Then a haunting song I heard recently by Lisa Loeb..."the time between meeting and finally leaving is sometimes called falling in love". The third is a song our daughter wrote, and the line that kept playing was "We can choose to be happy in each others arms", ( J-D's Song, www.reverbnation.com/sallynava).

Anyway, I kept thinking about building a life with a person. About what makes love last. We all know the usual progression: attraction, infatuation, devotion, respect, commitment, love. Sometimes we think the beginning phases are love. And they are. Otherwise the music industry would be out of business. But after spending thirty eight years going through the phases (and some repeat...how awesome is that!) I realize that we often get to the really good part years into it. When we are lucky enough to have found someone who wants the same things we want from life and spend years working together to fulfill our dreams, the trust built over time can be bedrock itself. It sees us through those times when we wonder what on earth we were thinking when we said, "I Do" (admit it now, everyone has those thoughts sometimes!).
But back to the songs. I think the theory about dreams is interesting that says our subconscious spends our dreams trying to figure out the mysteries of life that we give up on in our waking hours. I can see right off why Crazy Love wound its way through. My brain would chose that over "Why Don't We Do It In the Road" for sheer romance. And the Lisa Loeb song addresses all those heartbreaking endings that people live through when they can't make the leap to the next stage of love, for whatever reason. I know many wonderful people who have lived through this sadness, and I'm not saying they just didn't try hard enough. But Sally's song was the one that resonated with me in the end. Sometimes, the glue that keeps us together is choosing to be happy in each others arms. When we do,when we both do, when we look for the good in our partner and choose to give them the same grace we want for ourselves, a little miracle happens. We find, years later, that we love them more than the day when we stood there in our white dress and held flowers. Crazy Love.