Marlon and I are huge romantics.
We enjoy every love story.
We have probably memorized the script to Pride and Prejudice.
We are huge fans of Masterpiece Theater, especially the award-winning Downton Abbey series:
we couldn’t wait for Mr. Bates to join his beloved Anna.
We have enjoyed Enchanted April countless times and have seen it on stage and screen.
If Love Jones or Princess Bride is on, there’s no getting Marlon to budge;
if Daddy’s Little Girls or Love Holiday is on, there’s no getting me to budge.
The red roses, the Godivas (especially those chocolate-covered Oreos)
and the Cupcake Prosecco are plentiful.
But we both realize that the beginning and end of our love story
is not about romance.

Love is Spirit.
Whether in life or death, love is the eternal energy
that connects us, draws us, manifests us, and expresses as us forever.

Love never fails.  Love is not merely flesh but is the most powerful energy there is.  There is a reason why the Biblical witness John wrote in his letters that love never fails because love is God.

1 John 1:5 says “God is light”: a light that purifies us – as love does – from all sins.

This is not worldly love, as 1 John 2:15 indicates, not lust of the flesh or egotistical pride but the eternal love of Spirit.  This is not a fleeting love, a seasonal love – or a love that dissolves or fades like the petals of a rose or melts like chocolates – but a love never, ever changes.  We are required to love – not with words or speech but with action and truth (1 John 3:18).

Love never fails because “love comes from God” (1 John 4:7).  As John says, “[w]hoever does not know love does not know God” because God is not an engagement or a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a date or a promise or a marriage or a desire – God is the divine in us, the truth as us, the infinite, inexhaustible good in us.  “God is love” (1 John 4:8), a love that can never ever fail.

We don’t need to love for love because love is here – living in us (1 John 4:12).

“There is no fear in love,” no hatred, no jealousy, no anger, no resentment, no despair, no failure because perfect love – the love of Spirit – cannot, does not and will not fail.

No matter what challenge you have before you, love will take care of it.  No matter what you perceive as the enemy, love will remove it.  No matter what you fear, love will turn it on its head and make it serve – rather than harm you, protect rather than hurt you, prosper rather than rob you.

Love will turn bitterness into support.  Love will turn catastrophe into success.  Love will turn the enemies into friends.  Love will wrap you in a circle of power so protective that those who thought they meant you no good will succumb to your greatness or distance themselves so completely they no longer remember who you are.

No matter what the situation, what the circumstance, what the complication, love will heal you, love will lift you, love will shield you, love will guide you, love will direct you, love will strengthen you, love will feed you, love will completely re-order your affairs because love cannot and will not fail.

As I say in the book God is a Brown Girl Too, on page 44, “You are the beginning and end of your love story”: a story that will bless you, heal you, prosper you, and never, ever fail.