fairy tale.

Traveling across the country in search of "the one."
Your dream guy running down a crowded street yelling your name.
Finding love that works from just a smile from a cute stranger on the street.

This crap doesn't happen in real life. 

This quote came across my Facebook feed from one of my former professors:

You don't want to get married. You want to get married in a movie.

No one is as smooth as Will Smith in Hitch, as heroic as Jason Bourne in all of the Bourne Movies, as attractive as Ryan Gosling in well... anything, or as brave as Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

Real life is grocery shopping on a Thursday after a long day of working with incompetent co-workers and trying to decide what's for dinner...again. Real life is weeks of not connecting because ministry, events, other friends, family, bills and just... Life.

As I've looked at couples that I admire, I see teammates who work together with their middle school foster kid. I see best friends who just like hanging out with each other and watching Star Wars on a rainy day. Men who get up early to take the kids to school so their wife can sleep. Women who are willing to give up their comfort zone and move across the country for her husband's dream job.

I'll probably never write a novel about some grand romantic gesture that happened to me.

But... I'm okay with that.  

In fact, I'd rather have it that way.