Romance in the everyday

Truth be told, I’m not feeling especially romantic these days. Sometimes the tedium of day-to-day living just saps the romance right out of the air. There are so many things we have to take care of. Work. Kids. Laundry. Grocery shopping. Cooking. Yard work. Bills. By the time we get done with it all at the end of the day (and that’s assuming we do get done), romance is the last thing on our minds.

What’s so amazing is that even though most of us struggle to find the time and energy to keep the romantic spark alive in our marriages, we don’t have to look very far to see the importance the world places on romance. I just did a search on Amazon.com for books on romance. Even narrowing it down to books that fell under the “Christian living” category, I came up with 139 titles. Searching for Christian romance novels, I found nearly 500 books! Combine those numbers with the secular titles available, and the results are mind-boggling! Are we preoccupied or what???

I’ve read myriad romantic novels and books on romance, each time hoping to come across that one life-changing nugget that would magically (and permanently) revive the honeymoon spirit in my marriage. I have yet to find it. So that tells me maybe it doesn’t even exist. At least not in the form I’m looking for.

Maybe I need to face the fact that there is no “magic romance bullet.” No easy fix for the doldrums of midlife marriage or any of the phases we go through post-honeymoon. If we want romance in our marriages, we have to find it in the everyday stuff. A back rub at the end of a hard day. Holding hands while watching a favorite TV show. Praying with each other at bedtime. Running errands or doing yard work together. Taking long walks at sunset.

Everyday life is what we’re stuck with, and romance is what we make of it. Find the romance in one simple thing today and share it with your sweetie.