Love is the Answer

Saturday evening, I officiated Rebecca and Ethen’s wedding ceremony at Silver Spur Resort in Canton, Texas. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

I was scrolling through Facebook the other day, and yes as a 49-year-old guy I get Facebook, but not really all the videos interspersed from other platforms. They just confuse me. Still, this one I watched the other day hit the spot. This woman calls her mom on speaker phone and says that she doesn’t like the kids at the sleepover, that the kids’ dad is just mean, and can she come pick her up. Mom replies that the kids are HER kids, and the dad is HER husband, so no.

Now, if you are not a parent, you just laugh, ha ha, isn’t that funny. If you are a parent, while you may laugh, you’re also like, not fair, mom. Seriously. 

This is probably why so many of us admire teachers, like Rebecca, and are somewhat distressed when they come under attack or are disrespected. Because face it, we’re stuck with our own kids, but these people take it upon themselves to not only care for but educate OTHER people’s kids. 

Lee Iacocca, one of the most successful business leaders of the second half of the 20th Century said it best, “In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.”

Now, the whole story with Rebecca is that not only is she a teacher, but if we go back to the funny video I started with, it would be as if a young woman knocked on the door, and said I am here for the sleepover, I can’t get enough of these kids, and I love their dad. This video would never make itself to my Facebook feed, because it’s not humorous, but in a more logical world, one that had social media companies that weren’t trying to actively destroy it, perhaps it would.

What is it that would make someone like Rebecca take this step? I wish I had a really sophisticated answer for you, but really it is the simplest, purest thing that this world has, love. Love can be and is outwardly irrational and thank God for that. 

Love, after all, is what made so many of our ancestors say, you know what, I am going to sacrifice my happiness and my comfort, and my wellbeing, and travel across the sea to a land I know not, so my children will have a better life. 

It’s well worth it, though, because love, and you see this manifest itself in Rebecca and Ethen’s mutual love story and their mutual love story with their children, gives your life meaning and purpose. Love, specifically of children, makes us, in fact, immortal. 

I like how England Dan and John Ford Coley sum it up:

Name your price

A ticket to paradise

I can't stay here any more

And I've looked high and low

I've been from shore to shore to shore

If there's a short cut I'd have found it

But there is no easy way around it.

Light of the world, shine on me

Love is the answer

Shine on us all, set us free

Love is the answer