Your love is a song

Ah, l’amour. There is nothing like a good love story. For all you hopeless romantics out there, like me, we thrive on the chase, the wooing, those first few innocent touches that set the world on fire. The cadence of the heroine’s racing heart with that first kiss. The humming nerves sending shivers over our flesh as the music of falling in love plays in our minds.

Now, I am not a huge fan of sweet romance. You know, the hero and heroine are perfectly content holding hands until they profess their love and share one chaste and perfectly restrained kiss. Snore. I tend to favor the zsa zsa zoo kind of romance. No, not the naughty kind. More the honest struggle that comes with intense attraction. And I got to wondering, though I maintain a wholesome stance in my writing, does any of it push the envelope?

As I was agonizing over whether certain parts of my romance are a bit too honest, or too juicy, I sought out the Lord to see if I had crossed the line anywhere. He led me to the Song of Songs. I still almost snicker like that twelve year old girl reading the seemingly forbidden words of King Solomon when I open to the biblical bodice ripper wedged in my Old Testament. And while reading the poetic verses of the king disguised as a shepherd to woo the Shulamite woman, I got my answer. Much like the Lord is passionate in His pursuit and love of us, He imparts that similar flame to bless our own love stories. Ooo la la!

During church this weekend, the worship song by Misty Edward’s called “You Won’t Relent” had me in tears as I stood belting the words into the Amazonian woman in the row in front of me’s nest of acoustic dampening hair.--If you’ve never heard the song, Google immediately. I tend to be a bit of a crier as it is. Worship, a good book, a commercial. I even recently teared up at the end of Cars while I watched with my two-year old as Lightning McQueen selflessly forfeits the big win to push the injured old racecar across the finish line. Shameful, I know.

But I feel if we write from a Christian view point, it is almost impossible not to put an allegorical form of the greatest love of all into our stories. And the words to this song, like many worship songs, felt like a conversation with the Lord. A lover’s reprieve. A love song. “You won’t relent until You have it all. My heart is Yours…Many waters cannot quench this love.” Didn’t really feel like a hand holding song to me.

As a songwriter most of my life, music has always inspired my creativity and my emotions, and now that I write fiction, I still find that I draw tremendous inspiration from the lyrics of a great love song.

What about you? Do you hear a certain song playing in that scene when you are reading? Are there any songs that have inspired your love stories?