Is Your Romance Old or New?

Our culture worships the new. Whether it's the latest of technology or the most modern clothing, we spend our money on the newest products available.

Our celebrations are geared around the new as well. New babies are anticipated and gifts are showered on the expectant mother. Strangers in stores stop to ooh and ahh over newborns.

Thousands and even millions of dollars are spent on weddings. A newlywed couple is the very essence of romance. We snap photos and bask in the joy of new love.

Even birthdays cater toward the new. We throw the biggest parties for our child's first birthday; but by the time someone reaches his thirties and beyond, parties to celebrate his advancing age are fewer and farther between.

I'm glad we celebrate the new. Weddings and births and children's birthdays are momentous, much anticipated occasions. However, when I look at marriage, I sometimes wonder if "old" romance isn't somehow sweeter.

I see the elderly couple walking slowly through a parking lot, holding hands and a lump comes to my throat. When they walked down the aisle fifty years earlier, their gathered friends and family probably cheered. I want to stop my car, roll down the window and cheer for them now!

A bent older man shuffles along with a walker beside his wife. As they reach the restaurant door, he stops and holds the door for her. The gallant gesture of a new groom helping his wife into the getaway car could not be more noble. Tears spring to my eyes, and I resist the urge to clap.

The roses that adorn the bouquets of a wedding party are fresh and new and unspoiled, just as a new romance should be. However, I've been at the bedside with the couple fifty years removed from that day and smelled the scent of crushed roses. Though mixed with pain, the scent wafted so sweetly as the wrinkled little lady bent to kiss her husband one last time. The first marital kiss at the wedding altar offers hope, but this kiss is hope turned to sweet fulfillment and soon to become a memory.

By comparison to these, my marriage has been short. However, I know the joy of new romance and a new marriage. The new is always followed by the aging process---pain, sorrow, trying to pay the bills and the simple pressures of life. And although I hope to experience many more years before that last kiss, the few petals that have been crushed through the aging of a romance are lending an ever-sweeter aroma to our marriage.

I pray your marriage is growing sweeter with age as well.




Jennifer Self is a disciple of Jesus Christ who loves following His plan for her life as a wife to the most wonderful man in the world and mama to four little blessings. Her days are filled with spending time with her man, homeschooling, preparing reasonably healthy meals and keeping the dust bunnies and the clutter monster at bay with a little blogging mixed in. After her family has been taken care of, she dabbles in her other passions of reading, health and music. She blogs about her life, her Heavenly Father, marriage, parenting and home at www.joyeverafter.blogspot.com and real food for real families from the perspective of real faith at www.growingreal.net.