Soap Operas and Romantic Endings

By Rob Furlong
Challenge Newspaper Mar 09

I can honestly say that I have never watched a single episode of Neighbours or it’s mutant offspring Home and Away so I recently went online (in the name of research) to see what I had been missing. To say I was utterly bewildered by the end of my search would be an
understatement — I was totally confused!

I do have to admit though that I laughed loud and hard when I read the plot-line concerning a guy named Bob who lost his leg in a mountaineering accident only to be re-united with it when it (his leg) was discovered by a young couple on a romantic weekend camping trip. Can you imagine it? “Oh my, isn’t that Bob’s leg hanging from a tree? We must tell him quickly!”

Why are people so obsessed with soap operas? I think it is because many of us conclude our own lives are pretty boring and the “soaps” somehow fill a void for us by making life a little more exciting. But life is not like a soap opera! Life consists of a many things and these include the exciting as well as the mundane. Listen to the words of King Solomon:

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven...”

In other words, there is a set time for everything that happens to us during our lives as well as there being a specific period of time for each of them. Solomon describes many of these events in the words that follow: birth and death, weeping and laughing, mourning and dancing, loving and hating, war and peace.

None of these events, or others, always occur all the time — they each are given a set time. And none of them lasts forever — they have a period of duration that can sometimes be long or short, depending on the circumstances. Sometimes life is vibrant and exciting, but sometimes it can be plain boring! Can you relate to that? I most certainly can! This is the ebb and flow of life and it is grounded in reality, not some ridiculous soap opera.

I say this because many people manage their relationships as if they were living in a soap opera. We all love the romantic movie where the knight rides off into the sunset with his princess and they live happily ever after. We conclude that this is how marriage is ... but is it?

In our own marriages we discover that there are times of happiness but also conflict and in extreme cases, it seems to be only conflict. What happened to the romantic ending? For one thing, we don’t have the privilege of seeing how things worked out for the knight and the princess but I am pretty certain they will have had their tense moments as well. We have been duped into thinking that happiness in marriage is merely about finding this wonderful person and then everything will automatically flow from there — we have been “Hollywoodised” about love and marriage.

Every marriage, even the best ones, have their times and seasons: times of laughter and passion and yes, times of conflict and boredom. The solution is to try and make sense of these times. This is why Solomon also said, “God has made everything beautiful in its time...” It is God who brings meaning to every moment of our lives. We can only ultimately be completely fulfilled in Him, not through some soap opera or unrealistic view about love and relationships. And He is also able to bring meaning and fulfilment to our marriages.

A growing marriage begins its life when two people say I do to each other and to God.

Then they are truly free to grow into unselfish people who find meaning in the times and seasons of their relationship with each other and with God.