To Romance or Not to Romance.

 Day 5 of the 21 Days of Romance Challenge. 

I’ve choosen “un”romance many times. The days I live in grayness, when I forget to seek out beauty, when my feet plod between the kitchen sink, school desk and laundry room, I choose to starve. For there is romance to be found in any day, just like there is beauty. He created it so. And that’s where my seeking begins today. It’s been grey and rainy too long. After three days of dreary wetness, I look out to a pink sky, a day that promises blue skies: promises beauty.

So I begin at the beginning:
“The LORD God placed all kinds of beautiful trees and fruit trees in the garden. Two other trees were in the middle of the garden. One of the trees gave life--the other gave the power to know the difference between right and wrong.” Genesis 2:9

God created beauty, without necessity. Beauty in and of itself holds no practical value. But it feeds the heart; it speaks to our souls. We see Him in it. And then came the problem: “The woman stared at the fruit. It looked beautiful and tasty. She wanted the wisdom that it would give her, and she ate some of the fruit. Her husband was there with her, so she gave some to him, and he ate it too.” Genesis 3:6

Beauty is only for our enjoyment, just as is the variety of foods for our taste, the ability to laugh. He didn’t just make any wine after all. He brought the best vintage to the wedding. We have His permission to enjoy. He created us to yearn for love, to bask in it, to enjoy the pleasures of intimacy. He is not merely a functional God, He is a poet. We are His poem.

But problems will always arrive when we say to God: You aren’t enough. Valentine’s Day has been dubbed, “The Day of Discontentment,” because it is never enough. The desires of our heart will always be unmet when we seek for others to meet its God shaped need. It’s a bottomless pit. But if we revel in our Maker’s heart, His love spills over into our existence. It allows us to freely give-- opens our eyes to beauty, becomes us and we too grow more beautiful, more lovely. We’ll never run out of love, if it’s His.

It has been said: “Men always want to be a woman’s first love. Women have a more subtle instinct: What they like is to be a man’s last romance.” Oscar Wilde.

The romance I truly crave deep-down, isn’t born of the word: Eros, a sexual desire, it is simply romance: Arthurian, clinging to the “heroic exploits of chivalric heroes.” At the heart, I long for a hero. I long for His love. I long to know that romance isn’t dead, and that chivalry is very much alive. I long for the “ardent emotional attachment or involvement between people.” Is this wrong? It can be. If I fail to, above all, love the Hero who bled and died for me, my Savior, my true love. If I make it a love affair. If I have to sin to “get” what I want. But if His great demonstration of love inspires me, moves me to have a passion for others, to live out the great exploit He has written for my life, to seek after His offerings of beauty-- then no. I believe that is what I was created for: to bring Him glory in a life lived well, not to bury the talents. (What is the old testament, if not a book of imperfect heroes fighting on behalf of their God?) And I want to be in that story too. I want to play a part, be a heroine, live out His great ending.

Martin Luther says it far better, “God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.“ And all I’m really seeking is the romance: the adventure, the soul’s delight in seeing it there too. 

It was during our great “Romance Era,” in History that the greatest love stories, paintings, music were birthed. It is here we have the music of Ludwig Van Beethoven, Chopin, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty. The Romantic movement was based on originality, artistic inspiration, "creation from nothingness.” (Wikipedia) Our God began the greatest Romance Era all the way back in Genesis.

What is the effect of romance on life? What is the effect of love, beauty, music, delicious food, intimacy, gazing at the stars? What is the effect of God? We breathe deeper, our hearts become more aware—more aware of Him, His love. Romance is not Eve’s apple; it is the sweet tasting fruit of the garden which He planted for us. I wonder that God did not put any “shall-nots” in romance within marriage. He says: lust is cheep, drink the better wine: love. He only asks that we not eat of the forbidden apple: not leave the boundaries of marriage. He placed Song of Solomon in the middle of His book, a whole book dedicated to the romance and passion between a husband and wife. It can’t be there just to tease.

Romance, like beauty, is often so “chrisitanized” that it is lumped with Song of Solomon and seldom aired. We undervalue it. We label it as “vanity,” or, “unnecessary.” It is the broken bottle of perfume at Jesus’s feet: impractical to their eyes, a waste. Yet romance is there. It is poured out everywhere I’m looking in His creation, poured out at His feet, Poured forth from His words which created the night galaxies. And because it is everywhere I look, I am struggling with the notions I read in books: that we shouldn’t expect the romantic love in our lives, that once married, we can live without it. It all seems a big loop hole for the wed. What is love if not demonstrated? And every demonstration is romance in its own way.

Lord, may experience not be my best teacher. Experiences can be wrong. May You, my Hero, be my only teacher when it comes to love.

Your love sonnet to me today: blue skies emerging out of the gray, hope in being all You've made me to be. 

Romancing your spouse as part of the: 21 Days of Romance Challenge?
Here are a few ideas to turn some romantic water into wine too:

Host a wine tasting for him (or a sparkling cider night, if you’re not the type), and bring out the cheese and chocolate, or visit a winery-- tasting love

Make a label, suited to his vintage and place it on his favorite bottle of wine (or cider) as a gift—your love, celebrating him.

Discretely playing hide and seek in a bookstore is underrated, coupled with coffee, it’s a surprisingly great date-- your love still chasing.

And if you’re really not married to that “type,” fix something broken around the house that he would appreciate not having to do himself-- your love filling a need.

Care to see where we've been on this 21 Days of Romance? (Seeking out romance in His word) You might like to see:

Day 1: Gestures of affection are beautiful. There were beautiful to Jesus.

Day 2: Jesus teaches: if love amounts to anything, it's worth sacrifice, worth demonstrating.

Day 3: Romance is for feasting. For satisfying.

Day 4. What is love? Comfort. Because He does.

And because he was a romantic too:

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces,

I would still plant my apple tree.
Martin Luther

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul;

it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.
Martin Luther

Let the wife make the husband glad to come home,

and let him make her sorry to see him leave.
Martin Luther

My heart, which is so full to overflowing,

has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.
Martin Luther

There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship,

communion or company than a good marriage.
Martin Luther