Five Minute Friday: Adore.

The number of anniversaries was great and number. They had lived life together as a team. Raising the children. Growing the ministry. Making a living together.

Now here they were. Old, wrinkled, hard of hearing, silent, and forgetful.

This is how it is when you have grown old. The dashing groom and radiant bride is long gone, replaced by the effects of aging.

Still they adore. They sit there staring into each others eyes, but will never hear a word from lips silenced by sickness.

They adore even though nothing is returned. They adore each other because they have loved each other for many a year and can't imagine loving anyone else.

And then without warning a spouse dies. The grief shows that it doesn't matter that they newly wed bliss faded long ago. The one they adored is gone. The one that they will say was their better half is gone.

The one they loved through thick and thin. The one they shed tears with, faced hardship with. They are gone, replaced with a hole that cannot be filled with anyone else.

This is what it is to adore your spouse. When the years have stolen beauty and cognitive skills, but still there is love.

Adore is to love someone for what they cannot do.