What I Learned About Love from a Chicken Pot Pie

And a Sweet Picture of Enduring Faithfulness

On the outskirts of Pasadena sits a little café known for its chicken pot pies. The plaid-covered booths are faded and the rest of the décor looks like it’s straight out of a 1970s movie. But the kitchen is clean, the atmosphere is warm, and the chicken pot pies are out of this world.

Jeff first took me there when we were dating, and we’ve been going back ever since. Even now, when we return to Southern California for a visit, we make it a point to go back.

Every time we’re there, we’re usually the youngest patrons in the restaurant by at least two decades, and we love it. We always feel like we’re in a time warp, and we’ve come to think of it as a picture of what we want to be doing years from now — sitting in an old booth at a much-loved café, enjoying our meal and each other’s company.

We love watching the other folks in the café too. There’s always a couple or two, sitting side by side, rather than across from each other, and they’re eating off each other’s plates. They’ve known each other so long and they know each other so well that they don’t even need to ask anymore. He knows she doesn’t want her peas, so he scoops them up, while she knows he can’t have salt on his mashed potatoes, so she slides the saltshaker to the far end of the table.

Their meal together is like a well-choreographed dance.

Over a chicken pot pie, Jeff and I capture real-life scenes of enduring love that are better than anything Hollywood could ever dream up. Most movies with a romantic plot typically depict the courtship, the young-and-in-love couple who finally overcome all odds to be together. Once they’re actually together, though, the movie ends.

But in real life, that’s when real love begins.

The world would tell us that love is blind. But real love isn’t blind. Real love sees all and knows all and chooses to love anyway.

Real love is more than a fleeting feeling. Real love is rooted in history, in shared experiences. In friendship and fun.

The world would tell us that love is candy and chocolate, and maybe roses too. But real love is cast in the iron of everyday life. Like when a husband lets his wife sleep in while he scurries to get the trashcans to the curb in the wee hours of the morning before the garbage truck hurries by. Or when a wife keeps his dinner warm while he finishes up one last video conference call with his team at work.

Real love is a lot of things. But it’s not what the world tries to sell us through the stuff on screens or in the aisles of Walgreens.

Real love is knowing that when you are with the other person, you are home.

This week our culture will be awash in red and pink hearts, and it may be a time of sweet togetherness, or for some, it may be a painful reminder of dreams either broken or not yet fulfilled. Wherever you are today, I pray you know — deep in the marrow of your being — that you are loved by the One who thought of you and formed you and called you His Beloved.

Shalom.

Denise

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A Few Notes…

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*No part of this newsletter — nor anything I have ever published — has been made with Artificial Intelligence (AI) or ghostwriters. All of my words, including any accidental typos, are my own, except for when I quote others with appropriate citations and links.

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