Our love has been anything but perfect and anything but static. Inevitably there have been times when one of us has outrun the other and has had to wait patiently for the other to catch up. There have been times when we have misunderstood each other, demanded too much of each other, been insensitive to the other's needs. I do not believe there is any marriage where this does not happen. The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys. I suspect that in every good marriage there are times when love seems to be over. Sometimes these desert lines are simply the only way to the next oasis, which is far more lush and beautiful after the desert crossing than it could possibly have been without it.
...If we can stay in touch with ourselves, if
we can find the connection to our deeper
selves, we can find this deeper level of
hope that truly should be called
imagination...in the depths of each person
there is a greater self and a core
imagination that is truly the source of
one's life.
~ Michael Meade in LIVING MYTH podcast, Episode 167, "The Second Level of Hope"