With two teen daughters, I do lots of talking about love, marriage and all things related to boys.

I realize that what they see today on T.V. and in movies is not real love. Love today has been cheapened. It is nothing more than lust, wrapped up in a cliche storyline and sappy music.

But real love is a lot deeper. And I want my girls to have a true understanding of what love between a man and a woman looks like…before they start dating and certainly before they get married.

Finding the right person does involve attraction. It does involve fun. It does involve all of the butterflies and may even include some sappy music. But it is so much more.

It is knowing that you always have someone on your team. Which means that you commit to being on someone else’s team, forever.

It is being pushed towards God, not pulled away from God.

It is committing to stay when everything in you wants to run.

It is disagreement, and fighting and learning to play fair.

It is hard. It is sacrifice. Love costs you something every time. It cost Jesus. It will cost us.

But,

Love is fun. It is exciting and comforting and hurts in the most wonderful ways.

It is missing each other when you are apart and rejoicing when you are back together.

It is tag-teaming life, bouncing ideas off one another and dreaming and growing together.

It is representing Christ to the world. First to each other, then together, to everyone else.

Love is a little bit of what we see on T.V., but mostly, it is the hardest, scariest most fulfilling journey someone could ever take.

Marriage’s based on the things of movies are short-lived and unfulfilling. But marriages based on the grace of God, the gospel, and two people living out of their identity in Christ is the most love-filled type of marriage one could ever experience.

Daughters of mine, don’t settle for cheap love, wait for the type of love that truly embodies the meaning of the word love.