Love or Faith

Today I attended a wedding.... my first wedding in the U.S.... probably the third wedding in my life. It seems that that's a regular occurrence nowadays and it's only I who doesn't want to accept it as such. After all, I am 26 and most people I know are around the same age or a little older. It is only normal that they should be getting married, because that is what people at the age of 20 or 30 something do. Yet, I try to put myself in their shoes and I start feeling a certain kind of fear. Why? I have asked myself that question a million times, and I have no good answer. Maybe it's because I'm not ready, maybe it's because I've lost my faith in a long-term relationship, maybe I am just not "the marrying kind" (to quote the show I live and breathe nowadays, "Sex and the City"). Today, as I stood and watched my friends take their vows, I thought "You have to have a lot of faith to do that." And really, the more I thought about it, the more I seemed to come to the conclusion that faith is all it takes. You may love, you may want, but if you don't have the faith, that doesn't amount to much. While people are often quick to throw "I love you's" around, taking the next step comes as a challenge. And it is precisely because of this little word, FAITH. How many times have we seen the following scenario: two people really love each other, they live and laugh together, then the man proposes..... and all of a sudden everything changes, and it just doesn't work anymore. Is it because they did not truly love each other? Is it because they weren't "right" for each other (whatever that means)? Or is it because of the lack of faith in long-term love? I have had this argument with one of the people closest to me and he claimed that people often say "I love you" without really meaning it. They don't realize what true love is, so they assume that what they feel at that moment is love, whereas it might not be. Well, I think that often when people say "I love you" they do mean it, they do feel it, they aren't making it up, but then when it comes to the faith to have something long-term, to take that extra step, they falter. Maybe love is in our DNA but faith isn't. Or maybe faith has taken a harder beating from reality. Either way, is it love or is it faith that really matters?