***Fully-Grown Love Never Fails

Fully-Grown Love Never Fails By Dr. Charles D. Schmitz and Dr. Elizabeth A. Schmitzr "the marriage doctors" Award Winning Authors of the NEW Hardback Book Golden Anniversaries: The Seven Secrets of Successful Marriage Makes a GREAT Wedding or Anniversary Giftr Also available at Amazon.com and your local bookstore “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking.
 It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
 Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. 
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” 
(I Corinthians 13:4-8) As we sit at our desk today we are listening to a gentle rain. Spring is only a few days away. You can smell it in the air. You can see it. After several months of Winter you look forward to the pretty flowers, the budding trees, and the gentle springing to life of nature. You see it all around you. Hope springs eternal in the Spring and it makes you feel good. It always reminds us of what is truly important in life and in love. And the birds seem to be looking forward to it as they are frolicking around the backyard trees in search it seems of other birds to hang around with. Maybe they are looking for love. They surely will find it today. Spring has sprung! We have always felt that Spring, in so many ways, is a great metaphor for the evolution of true love. You start with a gentle rain and the seeds of love you planted start to grow until some day the love is real and fully-grown. Nature has a wonderful way of making us reflect on our life, our love, and all the good that surrounds us. Spring reminds us that fully-grown love never fails. The amazing thing about fully-grown true love is that it adds so much to your life and to the life of the one you love. And interestingly enough we have found the above quote from the Bible (I Corinthians 13:4-8) to be awfully apropos as a way of describing all of the successfully married couples we have interviewed over the years. Irrespective of your spiritual persuasion, these words written so long ago still apply today. Successfully married couples engage in fully-grown love and we believe this passage describes such love in all the right ways. All marriages go through seasons – much like the seasons of nature. It is born in the Spring, blossoms over the Summer, grows to maturity in the Fall, and settles in over the Winter. When we find true love, most of us find it for a lifetime – we find it for the four seasons of life. Those marriages and relationships that last over time started with the simple planting of a seed. The seed was nourished over time. Love grown with tender and loving care matures into fully-grown love that can withstand the tests of time. Fully-grown love never fails and to hear the refrain tells us why. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking.
 It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
 Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. 
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails” (I Corinthians 13:4-8). Enjoy love. Enjoy life. Relish the seasons. Love never fails.