It is cold the morning we climb. Strap snowshoes onto our boots. Head out while still dark. House quiet. Kids asleep.The break has been needed. Away from home. The pace of running too fast, too long. I look up here. White aspens, bare fingers stretch to the most pale blue sky.

Coffeeshop counters are filled with felted cupids and red glittered hearts. Men walk the streets of Palo Alto with bunches of flowers pressed into hands.I lift my face to the sun as I walk. Justin is close, this partner of mine who pushes me toward love more than anyone else I know.

She wore ivory, the same dress her mother wore decades before her.Her satin train melted onto the church aisle in ripples of lace delicate and sheer. She insisted her toenails be painted pale pink, her fingernails lacquered shiny. The flowers were shades of pink and coral—peony and ranunculus stems tied together with ivory ribbon layered over her grandfather’s cotton handkerchief with monogrammed pale blue trim.He stood there at the end of the aisle, young and strong and willing to take on the world. He was her everything, the man she believed she would love until the end of her days. This was it. The beginning of her life, the beginning of all possibility. They were going to be a team, able to conquer any obstacle, steadfast and sure toward anything that got in their way. Love conquers all, right? Love was certainly all they needed. Clearly, it would not fail.And then it did.She tells me she isn’t sure when the fairy tale ended. Or maybe it was never a fairy tale at all. But she loved him. And he loved her. Or I think she thought he did—and she believed she loved him too.Nevertheless, those words, “I love you,” became words for her that meant only what the newly engaged couple, elated and blissful, whisper to each over a candle light meal, a display of false, saccharine perfection displayed in Lifetime Channel movies on TV.She asks now, could love, with a husband, be something that could last—that would be more than a fairytale, but reality, too?Marriage is no fairytale. That’s for sure. Marriage is difficult, God.She prays, “How did it get so hard to keep loving each other? Where did we go wrong? How can I find my way to him—toward You, God, toward love again?”We ask these questions of God.And married or not, we wonder about love. Read More . . .