The Four Loves - Eros

This is the reading that I suspect I will most enjoy out of all the readings this interim. It is very relevant to me right now because I just got married on December 27. As I read it I thought back to the beginning of my relationship with my husband, Matt. We were just 17 and about to be high school seniors with many big life choices to make. As single people we had been inclined to put ourselves first when it came to decisions as simple as what movie to watch or what to do on a Saturday night to the more important decisions such as what college to attend. Then we began to fall in love. Our relationship grew and we began to think more and more about each other’s wants and needs instead of strictly ourselves. This brings me to the quote by C.S. Lewis in the chapter about Eros in his book The Four Loves where he said "Eros enters him like an invader, taking over and reorganizing, one by one, the institutions of a conquered country. It may have taken over many others before it reaches the sex in him; and it will reorganize that too." My interpretation of what Lewis said here is that as humans we are naturally inclined to put ourselves first, but when humans fall into true love that natural inclination changes as the time goes on and the love grows stronger and stronger.

As a boyfriend or girlfriend people are technically still single because they are not married. They are courting each other and considering if that person is the one they wish to engage in marriage with. As Lewis said that reorganization takes place once Eros enters a person. Still as two people, who are not married yet, are in a relationship it makes some decisions much harder such as choosing a college. Deciding on what college to attend it hard enough when you are not in a relationship with a man or woman, but because that love is blossoming it makes it extra hard. Matt and I spent our first year of college together at the same university in our home town but we both knew that university was not where we wanted to graduate from. We had the thirst for knowledge from a Christian perspective. We wanted the kind of education that Lewis wrote about in Learning in War-Time but we had to do the searching to find the right place; that was found in the discovery of Calvin College. The hard part was that Matt was able to get to Calvin College before I was. At this point we had been together for just over 2 years. We were very much in love and were getting closer and closer to thinking that marriage was the right decision for us. Matt made the right decision for him and came to Calvin but I was unable to do so just yet so I stayed in Tennessee at the state university for one more year. All in all we spent a full year apart in a long distance relationship. This is where the aspect that we were still single people came into play. Because we were not married we still had to live our own lives. As much as we longed for our own lives to walk along the same path so we could be together our lives took two different paths for one year and I can honestly say that was one of the hardest years of my life so far.

After that year apart some tough decisions were made regarding our relationship with each other. We were both deeply in love with the other. As Lewis said we were engaging in the love that brought "simply a delighted pre-occupation with the Beloved." We just wanted to be together. I strongly agree with the saying “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” I like to say it will either make you or break you. After many tough decisions about our future as single people and our future as two people in a loving relationship that was leading to marriage we both ended up back in Grand Rapids. He attended school and I worked with the goal of saving enough money to attend Calvin College as I had wanted for two years. A year later we were both attending school and were engaged to be married. Love can carry you all over the place. It will drag you through the mud and it can also put you on the highest cloud. We had definitely been drug through the mud by love but had made it to a high cloud.

My intention in sharing my story with you is to show how Lewis was so right in saying that love can definitely reorganize a person’s thought process. Five years ago, before I knew my husband, I saw my life taking a completely different path, but as soon as I fell in love with him the path I saw myself started to change. Eros invaded my life and I could no longer just think of myself. I thought of my boyfriend, then my fiancé and now I think of my husband. With each step we took our relationship grew and changed. Now because of marriage we have just entered into a whole new level where we are no longer single people in a relationship, but we each make up a part of one marriage. We will now consider the other in every decision that we make. In the process of our courtship God reorganized our lives and our priorities changed as our love for each other grew. Each step of our relationship was an  important one and I think that everything we went through to get to where we are today will help us as we grow in our new marriage. Even though Lewis was not married when he wrote this, he definitely knew what he was talking about.

I want to end this post with a picture of our ceremony and this quote from Lewis saying “First, theologically, because this is the body's share in marriage which, by God's choice, is the mystical image of the union between God and Man.” It was very important for us to get married in God’s house because our marriage is to be an example of the relationship between God and His church. We are very blessed to be able to share in this kind of relationship with each other and I hope that everyone of you who are yet to be married will be able to do the same.