Watch a “rom-com” at the movies or on TV and it would seem that finding perfect love that is fulfilling, assured, and long-lasting is remarkably easy, funny, and guaranteed to provide you with a lovely ending to your story. However, we all know that life does not work for us as it does for the characters played by our favorite actors and actresses.
Why can’t love be just like it is in the movies? The first answer to such a question is that it is the movies! It is not the real world, and even when it is a movie about a real person or persons, the story is changed to meet the tastes of audiences. Movies are escapism, so they just can’t be like real life, which can be very challenging. After all, if we are not raised with any other information or models to shape our viewpoint, we might believe that love of any kind is somehow imperfect if it doesn’t play out like a Meg Ryan picture!
Secondly, although the movies would have us believe that they are presenting an ideal or perfect love, they are not. We don’t find love stories like those in the movies because they are not possible or realistic. They put romantic love ahead of all else, and if they were in the real world, they would be a disaster!
The Best First Love
In the book “First Love: Embracing a Love that Lasts”, author Camille Cates shares the devastating story of her early life and the consequences faced when her decisions were made based on fallacies. Over many insightful chapters, she explains how she became pregnant at an early age, and despite pressures from friends and family, kept the child. She did not maintain a relationship with the little girl’s father, and kept on in her search for “real love”.
Finding someone she believed to be the perfect match, she began to build a life with him only to become pregnant again, and to suffer the worst possible loss imaginable. In a horrific evening of catastrophic revelations, she learned that this love of her life, this father of her unborn child, had been a predator. He had assaulted and murdered her young daughter, while she was at work.
Overwhelmed by grief, anger, loss and confusion, she aborted this man’s baby and found herself lost in a world of pain.
However, she then goes on to explain her journey back to life. This time, she turned to the first love of her life, the teachings of the Lord that had played such a tremendous role in her childhood and teen years. Saying, “God finally stopped my downward spiral of self-destruction when I came to the end of myself, and realized that none of these things were going to heal my brokenness. God began to show me that He wanted me to have a close, personal relationship with Him,” she then takes her readers on a fantastic journey.
Cleaning Out the Darkest Corners
Readers of this unique and powerful book will come to understand that the author’s idea and definition of true love is one of the most powerful and healthy imaginable. Though oriented towards teens, explaining that “many teenagers either don’t believe, or don’t understand, that God’s Word holds the answers to life’s biggest problems,” the pages can also be healing to those struggling through post-abortion trauma as well.
In a short, but remarkably insightful sentence at the beginning of the book, the author writes that you “never forget your first love…the Bible actually has a lot to say about your first love; so does the world. Who are you going to listen to?”
In this remarkable book and workbook, readers come to understand the world’s view of love, and then the true love outlined in the scriptures. Guiding readers to a loving relationship with God, before a love relationship with anyone else, it is a perfect resource for study groups, and if you want to learn more, visit the Healing Hearts bookstore to purchase your copy.
