I vow to fiercely love you in all your forms.

Oh, hey.

Let's talk about love.

It seems to be a heavy topic this time of year. Lots of people in it, many people despise it, some people fear it. Love is funny because it can be a noun or a verb. It can be something you want, something you have, something you do. It can make you incandescently happy or miserably sad. It can be the source of good in your life and the source of evil. It opens doors, yet also breaks hearts. I love love. Everything it entails. I love things, I love people, I love the idea of caring so much about anything that you need a word specifically to describe how you feel about it. I love that it gives people hope. I love that even in the darkest and saddest of times, you at least feel something. People do crazy things when they're in love (what movie?). There are so many forms of love, and it means many different things to different people, but I want to talk about love in relationships (typical, right?). 

I watched a movie this weekend. I watched it twice, actually. But that's not the point. The Vow. If you saw it and hated it, cool, I'm not here to talk about whether it was any good or not. I couldn't care less if you liked it so much you saw it twice or hated it so much you wished Channing Tatum would fall off the planet (but seriously, who are we kidding, we all love Channing Tatum.... except you, Mr. Terry). I think we can all agree on one thing whether we liked the movie or not-- Rachel McAdams is a babe. Both a dame and a professor (is there a female version of the phrase 'gentleman and a scholar'? we made that one up, here's hoping it catches on). 

The point I want to make about the movie is the vows they say at their adorable Art Museum wedding. My favorite was, "I vow to agree to disagree on red velvet cake"... red velvet cake has my heart. Anyway, she made some pretty hefty and incredible vows.

"I vow to help you love life, to always hold you with tenderness and to have the patience that love demands, to speak when words are needed and to share the silence when they are not and to live within the warmth of your heart and always call it home."

Those are intense, for sure. They are special and meaningful. However, his vows... to die for. 

"I vow to fiercely love you in all your forms, now and forever. I promise to never forget that this is a once in a lifetime love. "

The word fiercely placed in there so strategically that it cuts to your very soul, like a boss. And then he finishes with, 

"I vow to love you, and no matter what challenges might carry us apart, we will always find a way back to each other."

If you have seen the movie, you understand the extent to which he did this. He lost his wife, and yet never gave up on her. He had a free ticket to walk away, to find the next something new, and yet he fought for her. I know it's just a movie and it's giving women way to high of expectations for men bla bla bla... well kids, it's based on a true story so the good news is that there is at least one man in the world willing to love so urgently.  But my focus here is not whether or not men are willing to do this, it's about how willing people in general are to do this for someone they claim to love. Walking away from that movie we all said, "I won't settle for anything less than someone who loves me that much." How many of us said, "I won't give my heart to someone without loving them that much."? 

What I took away from this movie was how deeply I needed to internalize this kind of love. Am I willing to fight as hard as the man in the movie did to keep someone I love in my life? How many times do I walk away because it's the easy thing to do? Not just romantically, but in any type of relationship where I love someone. Do I give them everything I have? Do I fight for their love? Do I give them the attention and kindness they deserve? It's easy to say we expect someone to love us that much, but how can we expect it if we don't give it in return?

We need to fiercely love our lovers in all their forms. No matter what. We must have their back in all things. We must stand by their decisions. Be a shoulder to cry on. Make them laugh when they are sad. Remind them every day how much we care. And, yes, we need to do all we can to make them fall back in love with us if they get in a car accident and have head trauma and all their memory is wiped away and they go back to being hoity-toity-snotty-prissy-pants and want to date boring guys that work in a skyrise. We have to do all these things for someone if we expect someone to do all these things for us. So many people these days think they are entitled to things, including a perfect love. Well love isn't perfect, perfect love is perfect. You have to fiercely love in order to be fiercely loved. Make sense? Cool, huh? Now, go out there and get in love, and remember to love the way you want to be loved.