Re: Valentines Day Love Story Contest.

Posted by Daniel on January 28, 2014, 9:53 pm, in reply to "Valentines Day Love Story Contest."
Edited by board administrator January 29, 2014, 3:55 am

Fiction? She was born October 22, 1951 to a middle class family of 4 living in a newly developed area of California. As was the custom of her Christian upbringing she was raised to have moral integrity and to obey God, lest she temp his wrath and burn in hell for eternity. In the home, church and school she was taught that to have a happy life she would have to learn to conform, obey and to work hard. Upon completion of those requirements she would find her soul mate, that special one, her other half, hopefully one who had a successful career. They would fall in love, marry and have children, this was the goal she strived toward all through her youth. In her early years she experienced her first love in the fourth grade, a cute boy who made her heart go pitter patter, she thought about him constantly and wondered if he would be the special one that she had heard about, it certainly felt like he made her life complete. Her parents called it puppy love, whatever that was supposed to mean. It lasted for a while, then one day she saw a boy who was even cuter, his name was Steve! He was cool, very special and all the other kids liked him. When he showed her more attention than the other girls the feeling of love surpassed what she was feeling for her current boyfriend, she broke up with him and after a short time ended up going steady with the new guy Steve. They were perfect together, his popularity made her even more popular and her beauty made him the envy of all his friends, together they were perfect and as time progressed they fell deeply in love. It was not like love was totally new for her, she knew the love she had for her mother and father and the sibling love she had for her brothers and sisters. That love was that warm feeling of comfort of familiarity, something you could depend on which made you feel safe. She also knew the love of Jesus. At the tender age of 8 she had dedicated her life to Christ, she invited him into her heart and he had appeared. She loved Jesus with all her heart because he had first loved her. To her that was true love, unlike the love of her parents, siblings or friends or even Steve which could vary from love to contempt if she did not meet their specific needs. The love of Jesus was constant, always there when she got lonely or scared and was waiting in the wings when she was occupied with boys or other things. Over the years of dating she and Steve had their share of times when the love seemed to shift into something other than love, but never strong enough to permanently disrupt the relationship and after graduating high school they were married! Finally the achievement of the quest she had started so long ago to become complete was complete, she was now a complete person. Steve got a good job, she became pregnant with the first of what ended up being 4 children and became a full time housewife. During those years there were some bumps in the road mixed in with the good times that come from sharing life with the one you love and from watching your offspring grow and become autonomous individuals, each with their own personality and moods. Most of those bumps came when Steve or one of the children failed to live up to her expectations. Sometimes the children did not reflect the wonderful parent she strived so hard to be, or Steve forgot their anniversary. Other times he was just insensitive to her needs or he spent too much time working, she fought to stay his number one love, ahead of his love for work and his time away from her. Life was good but the life of bliss and fulfillment that had been promised in her childhood had become tarnished and seemed somehow unobtainable, at least on a permanent basis. The love she had for her children was surpassed by nothing, that was a love which was so deep, such an integral part of herself that no matter what was happening circumstantially it was constant. She loved them totally without conditions. The love of Jesus also remained, unaffected by any external events. No matter what the storm Jesus was always there to comfort her, a trait which she found curiously shared by the family dog. That damn dog was always ready to receive or give love, no matter how many days it had been since she had paid it any attention nor how many times she had inadvertently vented her frustration in its direction, its love was steady and constant. Like the love of Jesus or the love she had for her children you could depend on it as much as you could the sun rising or setting. The years went by and the children entered their early teens, she knew they loved her, at lest she hoped they did, they expressed it with quick "I love you's" as they hurried about their young lives. Her love for Steve remained but was now somehow no longer providing the rushes of chemicals through her blood stream as it had in the past, nor did it seem reasonable to expect it to, after all, so many years had passed that it had morphed into a kind of deeper love, something expected, counted on and dare she admit taken for granted at times. The love you's were automatic, the sex scheduled, less and less for some seemingly unknown reason. Then one day she met someone who brought back the pitter patter in her heart that she hadn't even known was gone. She tried to control her emotions, to act in some sort of sane fashion that a married mother of 4 was expected to act but to no avail, she fell in love. She told Steve that she was in love with another and asked for a divorce. Steve went crazy! First he became hurt then angry then downright vengeful! He got a lawyer and made the divorce as miserable for her as he possibly could. While she could understand the pain and hurt of rejection she could not understand how Steve's love for her could turn to absolute hatred! It was a terrible awakening and a fundamental challenge to her understanding of love. She wondered if love was just a bargain, you fill my needs and I fill yours and we call that love? And if one does not hold up their end of the bargain then it turns to hatred? If that was true then it was never love, at least not the unconditional love that she knew of Jesus and the family dog. Next she questioned the love of Jesus, was that also a bargain? Yes, Jesus did love her unconditionally, with conditions it seemed. And what of her new love, what the hell was that about, another unconscious bargain? Only the dog was left unscathed in her brutal awakening, and even it was under suspicion as to what would happen to its love if she stopped feeding it. The new love, Brian, turned out to be one in a million, or maybe 10 million. Brian already knew the fallacy of the something's missing myth the masses are programmed with in their youth and beyond. Brian knew that in truth there is nothing missing, that we are born safe healed and whole. Brian knew of the bargaining that passes for love, he was coming from a place of abundance and wanted to share that abundance with her without expectation of something in return. He called it giving to receive, he gave so he could have and his giving was truly unconditional. It was February of that year that she experienced her first true Valentine's day.

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