Rediscovering Real “Romance”

Okay, we need to mess with your understanding of the word “romance,” too, because it’s been lost to the world of men and we need it back. At the very mention of romance, you might be rolling your eyes. You’re used to it being “the stuff women want.” Your mind probably flashes to date-night planning and trying to find a babysitter, or Valentine’s Day and the commercial ploy to take your money for a dozen roses.

But I want you to hear as clearly as possible that you need and want romance too. You just don’t know to call it that. The word “romance” is derived from a fourteenth-century French word that originally had little to do with love pursuits. It described tales of knights and heroes on adventures likely written in classical Roman style (hence the romance moniker). A romantic was one who “partook of the heroic or marvelous.” Only later did the literary category of romance come to involve pursuing the fair maiden, which eventually culminated in our modern usage of the term.

But this means that, in its origins, romance described adventure—the adventure of love. We need to recover this much fuller meaning for the sake of your heart. Romance can be the literal adventures you go on with your beloved, from skydiving to train hopping in Europe. In can also be the wild risk of going to counseling together and learning to explore each other’s inner worlds. Hawaii can be romantic, but so is your couch when you’re pursuing her heart. I think of all the wild places love has carried me and my wife—from the day I first asked her out, to witnessing her birth three man-children into the world, to exploring new vistas in Colorado. All of that is romance—the kind that you can “drink deeply of . . . till morning” (Proverbs 7:18). And in light of that, it’s no wonder you cringe at the Hallmark version of it.

Love is a wild journey, far more harrowing and elating than a simple date night. And by the way: this romance is the only story sex was meant to live within, the only place your sexuality can thrive. That makes it well worth the pursuit.

Faithful God, please revive in me a fuller understanding of the adventure of romance and equip me to live it out. Amen.