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Happily Ever After

March, 2007

By Trish Berg

Love sometimes meets you when you least expect it, like a quiet little smile from across the room, or a shared hello as you pass in the hall. The sparks fly, your heart beats fast, and you have to remember to breath. Love is like a fairy tale and we are all in search of our own happily-ever-after story.

When I was a little girl, I imagined myself falling in love. I remember swinging on the swing set at the Village Green Park with my best friend, Lisa, as we talked and dreamed of what love would be like when we were all grown up. At twelve years old, we were little girls with big dreams, and we had it all figured out.

I did fall in love in high school, though it was more of a puppy love kind of thing. All butterflies and giggles and smiles in the hall on my way to Algebra class. We passed notes, held hands, and thought we knew what love was.

But love has a way of changing, growing up as we do. Puppy love doesn’t last, hearts are broken, and dreams disappear. So I gave up on love for a while.

Just when I stopped searching for love, love came into my life, and changed the path I was walking and the dreams I was dreaming.

I met Mike my sophomore year of college at Baldwin-Wallace, in of all places, statistics class. He sat in the back row with “the guys” in a large lecture hall, and I sat near the front. Every time he smiled at me, my heart beat fast and I had to remember to breath. Yep, it was love.

At the time, I was just getting over a broken heart and wasn’t sure I wanted to date anyone at all. But as the weeks passed, my heart won out, and we went on our first date. Before we knew it, we fell in love, and spent all our time together on that college campus.

Now, fifteen years of marriage, four kids, and a lifetime of changes later, I’m still figuring this love thing out. Over the years I have discovered that love is so much more than butterflies, smiles and buckled knees, tough that’s all important and fun.

Love is a choice you make every day, in big and small ways. We all speak certain love languages, and we all need to listen when others speak them to us.

When I surprise Mike with home baked bread in the mornings, or help him plan his baseball camp, he sees my love. When he cleans up the kitchen after dinner or brings me a cup of coffee when I’m on a writing deadline, I see his love.

And our love is reflected in all the bedtime stories, homework help, snowman building and hot cocoa drinking with four kids who keep us busy with life.

Though love may come at you when you least expect it to with smiles, butterflies, and buckled knees, that’s only the beginning. The “Once Upon a Time” moment that starts your story.

The “Happy Ending” kind of love that fairy tales are made of is a choice you make every day in what you say and do, and in how you choose to love. True love puts others first, forgives easily, and loves unconditionally. That’s the love God gives us, and the love He wants us to give each other.

Loving each other isn’t always easy, nor should we expect it to be. Nothing worthwhile ever is. And though love can buckle your knees with smiles, butterflies and sparks, happily-ever-after only comes if you expect so much more than that.

Trish would love to hear from you at www.trishberg.com, or e-mail trishberg @ trishberg.com.

© Trish Berg, 2006-
Trish Berg is author to The Great American Supper Swap, and Rattled - Surviving Your Baby's First Year without Losing Your Cool! She has been a guest ABC World News Tonight, Midday Connection, and The Harvest Show.
She is an internationally known speaker for ministries such as MOPS, Hearts at Home, and in Australia on Parenting Seminars Online. She has written for Today's Christian Woman, MOMSense, CBN.com and P31 WOMAN.
For more information, check out www.TrishBerg.com

Read Trish's Simplifying Motherhood column at C'Moms

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Happily Ever After