I’ve Never Met Someone I Couldn’t Live Without

I’ve always considered myself a romantic, but I’m not sure I fit that classification any more.

I love to read classic novels by Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell and E.M.Forster. I marvel at the deep connections forged between characters and am struck with the monumental, often selfless love I see housed within those yellowed pages. I can’t get enough of romantic, period films, often based on novels by the same authors above. I smile, dream and sigh viewing my kindred spirit heroine on the screen as she seeks a love to call her own.

And while I’ve loved before, once or twice, it was never like it is in the novels or in films. It wasn't meant to be, but my life continued on, and my wounded heart always recovered. Fact is that I don’t know if I want that burning kind of love that the great romantic poets wrote about. I love to read their magical rhythmic lines, but I don’t know if I want to taste the kind of love I can’t live without.

You’d think the romantic in me would want it, even if it was just for a moment. I could write about it for years to come – discussing what once was and what might have been. But the realist in me is more alive than when I was young. I’ll always have a flare for the dramatic, that much is true, but reality reigns me in more often than not. Stories like Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet are no longer romantic tales to me. Taking your own life because you can’t be with the one you love is not the kind of love I want to experience. Is that really love or an obsession?

I’ve never met someone I couldn’t live without. That might seem shocking, but I mean it sincerely and kindly. I’ve met and known some incredible people that I’d miss dearly if they weren’t here on this earth with me. I consider myself blessed to have them in my life for as long as GOD allows, but I’m not ready to throw myself on the sword should they depart this life. I will mourn their passing, but continue on, I must.

Maybe I’ve grown too practical, too no-nonsense in my mid-thirties. I imagine that my younger self would find me harsh, unsentimental and cold, and above all, unromantic. But I’m not dead inside. I’m not without feeling. I still yearn for a love of my own. I do. Honestly, I don’t know how to stop wanting that something more, and I probably always will, but I have learned to live without it. Life has gone on, day by day and moment by moment despite the lack of a potential mate, and I'm finding my own happy purpose along the way. Life isn't all romance, and my life certainly isn't like any novel I've read or movie I've watched. Real life is so much more.

While love has eluded me, life has not. I embrace it passionately as I am gripped by the MAKER of life and the ONE who defined love in the most incredible way possible.

So in truth, I need to rephrase my earlier statement about how "I’ve never met someone I couldn’t live without." I have met someone.

JESUS CHRIST is the ONE -- the only one I can’t live without.