Ever After: A Christmas reflection on love, fairy tales, and the God who came to find us.

When I was a student at Purdue, about 150 years ago, I can remember walking across campus in the cold. The closer I got to the engineering building, the windier and colder it seemed to get. I had to lean into it at a 45-degree angle just to keep from being tossed around like an empty grocery sack. Shivering, I often wished that someone (preferably a cute boy) would pull up in a warm car and drop me off at the student union. Of course, it never happened. But it was my fairy tale, complete with handsome knight and his trusty Charger.

I am a closet romantic.

I blame the fairy tales I grew up with, along with all the romance movies I used to watch. I learned a kind of physics from these stories—the ones we make fun of—boy meets girl, boy woos girl, things threaten, they overcome, then “happily ever after.” There was a large portion of my 30s when I threw all this out the window and tried hard to adopt a hard-boiled attitude. None of that is real, I said.

But I still dreamed about it. The over-the-top pursuit in which the boy was willing to do anything including embarrassing himself to prove his love. The crushing breakup and the 25 voicemails begging for reconciliation. The apology accompanied by a grand gesture like a room filled with hundreds of roses. The tearful, passionate reunion so complete that you knew that nothing could ever separate them, ever again.

There is a reason these stories keep being told, and I think that is that we want to believe that there is a love so deep and profound that nothing, not even space and time, could keep the lovers apart. But, reality is not much like these stories, not for most people. Life is full of the mundane and the brutal. Our hearts and minds are full of things we have to do, only occasionally interrupted by the things we want to do. We never called it “adulting” we just called it growing up. Work, pay the bills, keep the house, and if there’s time you probably should watch what you eat and exercise.

Sort of a depressing thought for Christmas Eve, huh?

Yes. But no.

Yes, the truth is that romance movies and stories are seldom real, and life can be hard.

But no, because it dawned on me today that we are all part of the greatest love story ever told. There is a love so deep and profound that it crosses time and space in pursuit of us. We forget about it. We run from it. We occasionally notice it but only in passing. But he (yes, it’s a person) keeps trying.

He did the craziest thing of all which was to dwell among us, giving us himself as a flesh-and-blood human.

The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” (Lk 2:10-12)

So when real life becomes too real, when anxiety or sadness creeps in (as it does), we can look up and remember: God did that for me. For you. So that we could live “ever after” with Him.

Merry Christmas, friends.