Last summer, we planted a small garden in our back yard. We did some of the standard garden stuff: tomatoes, green onions, a few different herbs. As we were strolling through Home Depot grabbing seed packets, I came across another plant I wanted to try out. Cantaloupes.

I grabbed a packet of cantaloupe and took it home to plant. Over the course of the summer, our garden grew. Some stuff thrived. Others did not. Meanwhile, my little cantaloupe vine grew and crawled along the ground. It flowered, and eventually tiny little fruits appeared.

I was pumped. I’m not a gardener. I think I probably have a black thumb. So I was thrilled that something I planted was actually growing. I couldn’t wait for it to ripen so that I could eat it.

Then it stopped growing. As soon as it got a little bigger than a softball, it just stopped and never got bigger. It still hadn’t ripened yet, and it was just stuck. I kept waiting for something to happen, but it never did. Instead, the cantaloupe rotted, and I had to throw it out into the woods for nature to have. It was useless to me.

That’s when I realized one very obvious truth. Gardening is hard.

Gardening takes a lot of work. You can’t just plant something and leave it alone, hoping that something will grow out of it. You have to tend to it. You have to water it. Prune it. Weed it. Take care of it. To grow a good garden, you have to take time every day to cultivate it. Nothing just grows by itself, except weeds (and our rosemary bush, which is out of control).

Love is a garden. It doesn’t just grow on it’s own. You have to take time daily to cultivate it. Weeds are inevitable. You have to dig them out. You have to get down in the dirt and get your hands dirty in order to maintain it.

Love is not the romanticized candy that’s portrayed in popular culture. That kind of love dissolves as easily as sugar. True love (any kind, not just romantic) takes time and hard work to maintain. But it’s so much better.

What do you think? Comment below.