The sun inched it’s way over the trees and crept between my eyelids as it does every morning. Soon, I would convince myself to get out from underneath the blanket, go down and start the coffee brewing, take a shower, get dressed, retrieve the aforementioned coffee, and sit in the chair by the window and think about love. I'm sure it's due to the fact that it's the day after Valentine's Day, but I woke thinking about love…a potentially dangerous pursuit for a man waking alone to be sure…but I knew it would be the topic of my morning meditation.
I rose to meet my Maker.
Actually, that sounds awfully dramatic…but you know what I mean.
This month, love is stretched. It’s very definitions suspect. From celebrity breakups to church members who have lost their companion, to those very dear who are hurting, to my own feelings of loss and struggle; believing in love doesn’t come easy these days. As I watch magazines report one breakup after another, one wonders if love is real. As I carried a woman’s husband’s ashes to the front of the church, one wonders if the loss is worth it. As I see the pain in one I hold dear, one feels helpless. As I watch my heart packing to go, one doesn’t even know what to feel.
It makes one wonder if love is worth it.
I’ll confess to being a trembling romantic.
I guess I’ve come to one reality in the season. Love has to be bigger than the potential results of loving. Yes, it’s true, love has the potential for big pain. I know I’ve given much to the act of love and, it can be argued, experienced a fair amount of suffering in exchange. I’m at a season of my life where I’m asking the question of worth. I wake everyday with just my own self. As the sun rises over the ridge outside my window I’ve often thought about someone else seeing this with me, but I have also learned to just enjoy the moment I’m in. When I turn the key at the end of a long day and there is silence instead of a voice of welcome or one who I, in turn, can welcome home, I wonder about love but again find that I am learning to exist in the quietness with my own spirit. I am finding that, at the end of the suffering and lack of having things “my way”, I am left with me and the heart I have.
And that heart is in love.
I would never be so arrogant to compare myself to God in any shape or fashion, except to say that I think I’m learning something about how He loves. So often our love is conditional - dependent on results. People please us and we give them love. They displease us and we withhold our love or take it away completely leaving broken hearts in our wake. God loves because that is who He is - it comes from the strength of his heart. I think He is perfectly happy all in Himself and didn’t create us because He was lonely. However, perfect love requires an object of celebration…something worthy of a perfect love. God chose the object of His deepest love and He is locked and loaded. His love is aggressive but never pushy, consistent without being pathetic, and committed without being naive. He doesn’t beg and keeps the door open because He loves. As St. John says: He is Love.
If we are made in His image, then our love can be like that. Clearly, He has much love that doesn’t ever get to be realized. At least that’s how I understand it to be. Love, realized, is one that is enjoyed between the lover and the loved - both exchanging roles and seeing the seeds of love grow more every day. It is love in it’s completion. It is love that is world changing. It’s love that can show up in various forms (friendship, partnership, familial, erotic, etc) but love behaves in much the same way. Love without exchange remains unrealized and may change form in order that the lover can maintain the good of their soul without injury, but if love comes from who I am, it doesn’t go away.
There are people in my life that, because of their responses to my love or my person, I have had to adjust how my love shows up in their life. There are people for whom I had great affection that, quite frankly, I struggle with having even a basic sense of humanity because of injury I received. It makes one question one’s ability to do it again. However, I have found that God gives grace to grow and that I am learning more about true love these days than I ever have before. I’ve learned that I have a capacity to feel quite strong in myself, but keep a space open for the object of my deepest affection. The love that is returned to me helps form how I love in a particular circumstance or with a particular person, but my love is just that…my love.
I’m grateful that, after having done it wrong for so many years, I’m learning to do it right. I may wake up every day and experience the sunrise solo and crawl into bed at night with little more than a book and the satisfaction of a day well done, but it will not change my love. My love comes from me and I hope that I get a little better at it with each sunrise. Do I wish for a particular someone who wants to be there watching the sunrise with me? Of course, I open to a relentless hope. There might not be someone who wants to be there with me this morning, but as I slip on my robe and go down to make coffee, I know I am wrapped in good love. I don’t miss that. And I also know that my heart loves the way it loves and who it loves. I can find peace in the fact that I loved well and gave all I had. There is a joy in that as well as I head down the road today and keep my eyes open to new graces.
So, I guess, at the end of the day, I still believe. I don’t think that some of what calls itself love out there really is - including some of the ways I’ve approached it in the past. However, I also know what it is to be loved without condition by a Person who loves the right way. He has sweat a ton, I’m sure, in His commitment to loving me and hasn’t always gotten the best of this deal. But I’m glad He loves me the way He does. Every once in a while I come to my senses and remember Him. He doesn’t seem to get bored of me. He is the kind of man I wish to be. His is the kind of love I wish to have. His is the kind of love that changes the world.
I don’t love without fear, but I love with courage. I’ve learned from the best.
I was reminded as I ended this piece of the scene from The Princess Bride where Inigo Montoya has finally found the six fingered man. The man, seemingly has bested him with a knife to the stomach. Inigo, finds strength in his commitment to something bigger than the pain in his gut. Watching Inigo struggling to rise, the six-fingered man says:
"Good heavens! Are you still trying to win?"
Yea, I am. There is too much good in front to get stopped just shy of the goal. I have a course to finish...
And maybe I might be asked to be the next Dread Pirate Roberts.
You never know.
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