Love That Lasts

As I was sitting in church today, missing JP while he's helping some friends move to Utah, I witnessed a touching moment between a husband and wife a few rows in front of me.

They are an elderly couple, both confined to wheelchairs, that aren't always able to come to church due to their health. She has no use of her hands and legs and can barely speak. He can speak more easily, but has the use of only one good hand. I had rarely noticed them before.

The woman's soft, pearl-white cardigan had slipped from the arm of her wheelchair and lay on the floor, outside her ability to reach. Her dear, sweet husband, with painfully slow movement, bent down from where he sat slumped in his own wheelchair and picked up the cardigan. With an effort that obviously required great concentration and patience, using his one shaking hand, he gently draped the cardigan over one of her shoulders, and then the other. This gesture took him almost a full minute. He then spent the next minute sweeping his eyes carefully over his work, making little tucks here and there to ensure it wouldn't slip again. When he was finished, it seemed her loving smile was more than enough compensation for his efforts.

Although this was a seemingly insignificant task that was unnoticed by most, if not all, in the room, it moved me greatly. For reasons I couldn't explain, tears where coming to my eyes. Immediately, I thought, "This is what lasting love looks like." Every childish dream I had been carrying around in my mind about my ideal husband was instantaneously replaced by this one kind act. I was so grateful that I had married the type of man that would live up to this new-found expectation of true love.

And I found myself, for the first time, excited about growing old.