By Nick Chiles and Denene Millner

There they stroll, hand in hand, beautiful and vibrant and brilliant, a shining beacon of the possibilities of black love. They are the most powerful couple in the world; we embrace them so hard that sometimes it hurts. They continue to astonish us, delight us. Can this really be happening? We must ask the question over and over, keep looking back at the screen, sneaking another bolstering glimpse before we go off to our day.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama

Effortlessly, wonderfully, Barack and Michelle have done something that a year ago we might have proclaimed impossible: they have demonstrated with no uncertainty that not only is black love still possible, it is ordinary. By ordinary, we mean normal, commonplace, regular. That is not to say that our new president and his wife are not exceptionally gifted. They are both fabulous examples of the lengths our talents can take us when combined with hard work and perseverance. But when we look a bit closer, peel back the layers, we find a relationship that is not heroic.

Yes, it is strong and thriving, productive and mutually supportive, but Barack and Michelle have shown us time and again that it is also the beneficiary of hard work. It is imperfect. At times during Barack’s run for the Senate and after he moved to Washington, Michelle wondered if she could continue holding down the household, the girls and her own job while he was gone for much of the week. She said she felt like a single parent. And Barack has said he could feel Michelle’s ire-at times they were barely on speaking terms because he was gone so often. But rather than look askance at these admissions, we choose to embrace them.

What Barack and Michelle are doing is providing all of us with a framework, a map to get through the difficult times. And in their case, has the world ever offered a greater reward for working through your problems than the mantle of American president? The value of their example shouldn’t be underestimated. As we all well know, these are increasingly difficult times for black love. Black men and women seem to be stepping into our relationships with so much baggage, so much seething anger just below the surface, that it appears love never stands a chance.

When we would travel around the country on book tours or public speaking engagements, we would grow exasperated when we’d be confronted with accusations that our love seemed too perfect, like some cardboard cutout from The Cosby Show. But it’s not easy, we would say. You need to come home with us and see the sweat and toil that goes into this, we would plead.

One of the greatest failures of our generation is that too often we seem to be missing the tough and flinty stuff required to make it through the years, the decades of a marriage. The stiff spine and unbending resolve that allowed our parents and grandparents to believe that no matter how bad things got, they had no choice but to see it through. And not just for the kids. They had to do it for our people, for the strength and viability of our communities, so that the children down the street and around the corner and in the school could look at them and see hope, see a way around and through the difficult challenges of being alive and hated.

Imagine how much of a support Barack and Michelle have been to each other when things were looking especially bleak, when they had to renounce their pastor, when he had to scatter his mother’s ashes, when the world asked him to be a savior.

As for us, we couldn’t even envision having to wake up and face a new day-particularly in these unbelievably depressing times-without being able to gaze across the bed and get a jolt of inspiration from our mate’s beautiful face. That jolt, that strength, that faith, that hard work-that’s black love.

Nick and Denene are the co-authors of six books together, the most recent “A Love Story” (Dutton). Denene is the author or co-author of a total of 16 books, including the just-released “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man” with Steve Harvey, which is currently number one on the New York Times bestsellers list.