I'm an idealist. That's not an apology, just a statement of fact.
Being an idealist has everything to do with my work.
Everytime that I meet with couples for the first time in marriage preparation, I admit that I only have one simple, if lofty aspiration with working with couples. I want to change the world. That's all.
Sounds lofty, and I believe that it's totally possible, because when a couple has greater intimacy with each other and can build each other up in love, it touches everybody around them. The reason for this is also simple. Love cannot be contained. It's like kudzu in the middle of the Georgia summer. Once it takes hold of our hearts and lives it cannot help but to touch everything and everyone that we come into contact with. In those regards, changing the world one couple, one family at a time is not such a lofty goal, afterall.
Here's the catch, though: it's more than the emotion of love--it's the commitment of love. It's having the hard conversations, looking at the patterns that work as well as the ones that do. It's owning our own triggers and the deeply-seated feelings of inadequacy that we all bring to our relationships in some form or fashion. When Joseph Campbell called love an ordeal, surely this is a bit of what he meant.
And it's an ordeal worth undertaking, because love transforms everything. Love changes the world. One person, one couple, one family at a time.