What If You Wrote A Love Song?

If you happened to see the Top 10 songs on iTunes this past week, you may have noticed a sweet lullaby called “Oh Sweet Lorraine.” It’s there among all of the usual suspects: Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Robin Thicke, and Miley Cyrus. But this unlikely hit didn’t come from a musician. It came from 96-year-old Fred Stobaugh. He doesn’t sing or play an instrument. He’s an Illinois man who lost his wife of 73 years, Lorraine, in April. On a whim, the widower entered a song-writing contest he saw in his local paper.

Fred wrote the love song about his bride. “She was just the prettiest girl I ever saw,” he said about meeting Lorraine in 1938 at an A&W root beer stand. “I just fell in love with her right there.” Fred and Lorraine dated two years before marrying in 1940. They would have celebrated their 73rd anniversary in June. “After she passed away

[at age 91], I was just sitting in the front room one evening by myself, and it just came right to me,” Fred says of his song. “I just kept humming it and singing it.”

He wasn’t the only one humming it. The tune has gone viral, beating out Justin Timberlake and skyrocketing up the charts. It’s a simple song – and that’s the beauty of it. “Oh sweet Lorraine,” the chorus begins, “I wish we could do all the good times over again.” The song continues, “Life only goes around once, but never again.” Ultimately, the song is a love letter set to music from a devoted husband who misses his best friend and the love of his life. It’s heartbreaking, it’s beautiful, and it just might make you cry.

Stories of enduring love have a way of doing that. Why? Because they are aspirational! We all want a love that goes the distance, overcoming hardships, and yet still stirs up passion within us to write a love song – even after 73 years of marriage.

That’s why this week’s verse from Romans is so poignant for couples. It says it plain: Our suffering produces perseverance. It’s a kind of passionate patience that forges the tempered steel of enduring love. It produces character that enables us to live out a lifetime of love together. And that gives all of us hope. So, if tough times are dragging you down this week in your marriage, take hope in the kind of perseverance that couples like Fred and Lorraine have found. Take hope in God’s strength to discover how suffering produces perseverance.

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