When Love is Enough

When Love is Enough

A poem by Glendon Caballero

This is the story of love

This is the story of marriage

This is the story of life

Long ago and far away

In the red and restless aches of youthful love

The sages warned you with earnest tones

That love is not enough

“Love alone can’t go supermarket

Love alone can’t raise pickney

Love alone can’t pay rent or mortgage

Love can’t buy baby formula

Love is not enough.”

So you bust the books

Wrote the best resumes

Interviewed for the jobs

Or you bought the tools

And the thermos

And awaked at dawn to learn the trade

Or you ploughed the land

Planted corn, and peas, and potato

And looked market

So you could afford the supermarket aisle

So you could marry and raise proper children

So you could pay the rent

And the light bill and the water bill

So you could buy the baby formula

And you wondered whatever happened to love!

“They told us love wasn’t enough”

Love kept you strong and true working long and tedious hours

Love cheered you on when you got promoted

Love comforted you when you got fired or passed over

When the long weeks dragged on without a job

When storms and drought destroyed the crops

Love kept you warm when the bills overtook payday

Love kept you united when the utilities went unpaid and disconnected too

Love kept you awake to care for crying babies in the middle of the night

“Love endureth all things”

Love gave you patience to work nine to five

Then come home to cook and clean and submit though tired

Love made you listen to the endless tales of nothing important really

Just to hear your lover’s voice

Taught you to forgive each other

To kiss and make up and pray knee to knee

Love woke you up to create breakfast out of yesterday’s leftovers and tomorrow’s crops

When those who should know better blamed you for not doing better

When those who did not know better said you were doing well

“Love beareth all things”

And love found time for God and church and friends and family

Remember prayer

And love found time for SabbathSchool and divine service, and bible class and AY and vespers

Please remember prayer and bible study and witnessing

And love found time for crusade and revivals and retreats and camps

And love found time for weddings and funerals and birthday parties

And love found time for picnics, and country trips, and cold foreign towns

And love kept you going despite racism and classism and every other ism

Love gave you courage in the midst of failure and disappointment

“Love hopeth all things.”

Love rejected praise of men and sought God’s holy temple

To share the word in truth

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal”

Love kept you humble in the midst of worldly success

To fall on your knees and thank God for the Honda,

Even when it wouldn’t start

For the house even when it leaked

For the husband even when he got on your last nerve …woman you understand

And happy healthy children, love hugged them when unhappy and healed them when unhealthy.

For the laws and the prophets have two great commands:

Love the Lord thy God and love thy neighbour

God’s book of love implored you to obey and claim the blessings:

“If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands all these blessings will come upon you:

You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country

The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock – the calves of your herd and the young of your flocks

Your basket and you kneading trough will be blessed

You will be blessed when you go in and blessed when you go out.”

Love is of God the Giver of good gifts

So love taught you how to share your daily bread

With church, with family, with friends, with neighbours

And thanked God for the hands that gave to you as well

Yes thank God for the cross where He gave all

For God so loved the world He gave the Son

For God is love

And love is enough

“Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord.”

“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it”

“The end of all things is near

Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so you can pray

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”

For God is love

And love is enough