Ready to hear about the greatest love story ever told? The Notebook! If you haven't seen or read this, then I can almost guarantee you have at least heard of it. Alright so I fibbed, that isn't the greatest love story ever told, but it does play a huge role in what I want to talk about today. If you haven't seen it, then go watch it and come back! Or you can just read on and I will break it down for you. There will be spoilers so....you've been warned. The Notebook was a book written by Nicholas Sparks then turned into a movie famously starring Ryan Gosling as Noah and Rachel McAdams as Allie. The book and the movie were pretty close to each other, and this is one of the rare cases I kind of prefer the movie. It's called The Notebook because it starts off with an older gentleman visiting a woman in the nursing home and everyday he comes to read this love story to her. The story itself is pretty common, a young guy meets a young girl and they fall madly in love even though she comes from a rich uppity family and he comes from poorer means. After their beautiful summer together ends, she moves away with her family. He writes her a letter a day for a year and her mother hides them because she doesn't think they should be together. Years down the road Allie becomes engaged to someone her parents approve of, but Noah never had gotten over her and was still madly in love with her. In fact he had bought a house that Allie had fell in love with, and he had remodeled it using the details of what Allie had wanted to do with it all those years before. Allie then reads about this house in a news story and realizes that maybe she wasn't completely over him so she decides she has to go back and visit him for closure I guess. Thus begins the necessary love triangle that is so common in these sort of stories. More on that later. Anyways, after revisiting Noah, the intense passion of their summer together is rekindled and Allie finds out about her mother hiding the letters. Push comes to shove and her mother shows up and explains why she did it, and then drives her to a railroad work yard and explains that she was in love with a poorer man a long time ago and she never went back for him so she understands why Allie had to do it and pretty much tells her to follow her heart. It all comes to a point where Allie has to make a decision and she chooses Noah. They end up getting married and live happily ever after. Throughout this whole story it would periodically cut back to the older gentleman who was reading this story to the woman. He closes the book and you find out that the older man and the older woman were the grown old Noah and Allie. You find out that he was reading this story to her because she had alzheimer's and couldn't recognize anyone she had known for years. She realizes this was their story and she opens the book and reads the note that she had wrote when she first got alzheimer's that read something to the effect of, " If I ever forget you, read me this story and I will always come back to you." And so every day Noah would read this story to her and sometimes she would remember for just five minutes, sometimes longer. The movie ends with Noah visiting her room that night and they fall asleep together and in the morning the nurse finds that they had passed together, hands held close.
Wow..... I'm not going to lie, it gets me every time. Even Noah's own children couldn't understand why he did it everyday just for five minutes of her remembering and he would say " Because I love her." Nicholas Sparks can write let me tell you. He is probably one of my top 3 fave authors. Now, generally when this movie comes up the people I have talked to react one of two ways. They absolutely love it, or they absolutely hate it. I have found that those who love it, do so because they dream that that kind of love could be real and they want to experience it. Those who hate it, do so because they don't think it exists and it unrealistically portrays a romantic fantasy that somehow could never be possible. If you haven't noticed by now, I fall into the former, absolutely love it crowd. Truth be told though, I would say I don't just dream of experiencing that kind of love, I can honestly say I know for a fact that it exists and is real.
I know it exists because I witnessed it firsthand. You see my mother had multiple sclerosis. It is a disease that attacks the nervous system and usually leads to physical disability. It affected my mom in such a way that after years of other symptoms, her hands began to have tremors to the point to where she could no longer feed herself or allow her to hold things anymore. Then it began to affect her legs to where she no longer could get out of bed and for the last ten years of her life she was bed ridden. It got to the point to where even putting the thinnest sheet on the bed caused her pain as if someone was punching her. While she didn't have alzheimer's like Allie, the combination of the M.S. and being bedridden made her start losing her short term memory. She could remember everything from years past but she couldn't remember if she just ate, or if you had just met her she couldn't remember your name or even having met you a few days later. Through all of this, my dad loved her and was there for her. When she had to go to the hospital, she developed bed sores and her bed sheets weren't changed properly enough so when she was able to, he took her home. Doctors and people in the family said maybe she should go to a home where
nurses and doctors could take care of her but he refused. He knew that if
she went to one of those homes it would have made her condition worse. When she first became bedridden, dad hired a couple of people to take care of her while he worked his butt off. Every day he went to work and the only reason he did it was to make money so she wouldn't be in need of anything. In December of 2008, she had gotten sick with the flu, but the M.S. had made her immune system so worn down she couldn't fight it off. One night, two hours after I had left, she stopped breathing. Dad laid her on the floor and immediately started C.P.R. and called 911 but it was to no avail. And so it was December 15th, my mother passed away. Afterwards, doctors who knew her situation well told my dad they were amazed she was able to live as long as she did. They even went as far as saying that it was probably because my dad took care of her instead of putting her in a home when he could have and walked away. I know the perfect love that was described in The Notebook is real because I saw it with my own eyes. Does that mean there were no problems, or that dad didn't make mistakes? No. That perfect love was enacted imperfectly precisely because he is human but that love that Noah had for Allie was very real and present in my parents.
Now let me tell you about another love story that convinces me The Notebook's love is real. There is a Groom waiting for His Bride as we speak. See a long time ago they met in a garden and had a summer of intense intimate never ending love, and then the Bride had to move away for a long time. Over decades and centuries the Groom sent letters and messengers trying to show that he still cared. Just like in the Notebook where Noah planned on buying and building the dream house for Allie, this Groom had a plan that was in place since before the Bride was ever in the picture. Of course the Groom I am talking about is Jesus, the Bride is his people, the Church, that is YOU and I. The plan I was referring to is the Gospel. That Jesus would prove His love for us that centuries upon centuries couldn't diminish. He came down and lived among us and ultimately sacrificed everything, literally. He received the worst kind of treatment in the form of beatings, flogging, and a crown of thorns was beaten into His head. He was humiliated beyond belief in the mockeries, and insults. To top this humiliation, and as a final act of sacrificial and complete love, he gave His life in the worst death imaginable upon a Cross. Even after all that, it wasn't enough. You know how people say they would go to Hell and back for the one they love? Christ did it and then was raised from the dead. Remember that love triangle I said I would get to later? See there is a constant battle being waged between Christ and the serpent that is, the devil. The devil portrays himself as the flashy rich guy that we "need " that is forever trying to persuade us to choose him. He tries to convince us that Christ is the poor one that could never be good enough for us when the Truth is he is more than we could ever want or need. There comes a point when we have to make a choice. We have to choose if we are going to believe the lie that will never make us happy, or the Truth that will forever free us. We may not have amnesia or alzheimer's but we do have what I call sin-nesia. We have this tendency to fall into sin even when we don't want to. And just like Noah in his older age read that notebook to Allie every day, God is calling us back. Everyday God reads our story to us through the Gospel saying, " You are mine, and I am yours." He is constantly trying to get us to turn back to him, calling for our continual conversion until we can finally join Him forever in Heaven. And THAT is the greatest love story ever told.....
