If as we are walking, a hand should slip free…

I’ll wait for you, and should I fall behind wait for me.

“If I Should Fall Behind” is a love song in the truest sense of the words. It is real. A great love song shouldn’t be filled with rainbows and butterflies because love is not filled with rainbows and butterflies. Amidst the light there is always an underpinning of darkness. Within the glorious ecstasy of love there is always a layer of fear, danger, and worry. If those fears get to you first, I promise I’ll wait for you. If those fears get to me, I know you’ll wait for me. Because that’s what real love is.

But each lover’s steps fall, so differently…

But I’ll wait for you, and should I fall behind wait for me.

No matter how much you have in common with your partner, your steps are not always going to fall together. You’re going to have differences. They can range from petty silliness (arguing over what movie to stream or what food truck to hit) to epic struggles (the decision to have children or where to buy a home). But we know that as our steps take us in different directions, the paths we forge lead us to the same spot—where your hand will rejoin mine, clasped together again.

Now everyone dreams of a love lasting and true…

But you and I know what this world can do.

This world can close in on you very quickly. When we fall in love, we are filled with promise. The promise of a million tingles running up our arms. The promise of an iced tea on the front porch with our 2.5 children running through the sprinkler as they laugh with an innocence that as adults we lost long ago. But the world can put the most ardent strain on the best of promises. The tingles go away when you can’t make the mortgage payment. The tingles go away when your car breaks down on the side of the Route 95 leaving you alone in a smoky haze of humiliation. The world tests you every day. Is your love strong enough? Will you wait for me? Will I wait for you?

Should we lose each other, in the shadow of the evening trees…

I’ll wait for you, and should I fall behind wait for me.

True love makes a promise to its possessors. The promise that if you fight through the dark times, that if you withstand the shadows that this world casts upon you, you will be given the greatest of payoffs. Your reward is a life spent with the one person who is your true companion and your kindred spirit. Who will always wait for you, no matter how far behind you fall.

“If I Should Fall Behind” is the fourth track on Bruce Springsteen’s 1992 album Lucky Town.