Choosing Love

My father-in-law George recently held a "commitment ceremony" with his high-school sweetheart Lynn Ellen. They were in love growing up in Lubbock, but broke up in college and each went their separate ways. After seven combined children, several ex-spouses, and more water under the bridge than Niagara, they reconnected and fell in love.

And this past Saturday, they committed in front of their friends and family to staying together for the rest of their lives.

I've known a lot of people in my life, both young and old. Time and again I've seen people choose to embrace the negative, wallowing in fear or sorrow or hatred or anger. My grandfather held a grudge so long he eventually drove to the cemetery where his nemesis was buried and pissed on his grave. My grandmother kept the names of all the people who didn't send her a condolence card when her son died for more than five decades, and never forgave the slights until the day she died.

When I first met George, he was in the same boat. He had a lot of rage and anger still in him, from hurts I'm not qualified to judge, and he was holding on to them with both hands. In relationship after relationship, I saw him pursing women who were not healthy for him emotionally. I think maybe what he valued most in those women was their inability to become truly intimate in a way that would penetrate that rage and hurt. Whether their distance was maintained by being a native Frenchwoman with a non-native's difficulty with English, or wrapping themselves in pretentious modern accouterments, or through nigh-unbelievable amounts of sex, none of them could break through the chains George had put around his heart.

I know a lot of people would just stick with that way of life. Keeping on in your rut is a hell of a lot easier than jumping the track. Once sorrow or rage or loneliness get a hold of you, it's damn hard to let go. Even the roughest garment eventually becomes comfortable, and most people just never bother flinging it off once it's no longer useful.

But then George reunited with his high school sweetheart Lynn Ellen, a woman of love and warmth who by virtue of their long history could cut right past the bullshit.

And he did something truly remarkable -- he chose love.

He could have done what most people -- young or old -- do. He could have just kept on keepin' on, holding on to his old pain and refusing to step into the warmth. But he didn't. At 68 years of age, George Phenix chose to change his course, to unbind his heart and to choose love.

I've rarely witnessed a greater act of courage.

George laughs now, he and Lynn Ellen together, more than I've ever seen before. He has a contentment, a peace, about him that I've not seen in the ten years I've known him. Taking a chance on something new, on letting go of the comfortable (if still painful) hurts of the past, is terrifying, but what waits beyond it can truly transform lives.

May we all -- young or old, man or woman, gay or straight -- be so lucky as to find our Lynn Ellen, and so brave as George to choose love. Thanks, you two, for showing us the way.