I have a multitude of friends from different walks of life, different backgrounds, different personalities, and different religions. I have friends that are 16 years old and friends that are in their seventies. I have friends that have different political beliefs, different societal beliefs and different thought processes. The one thing that every one of my friends has in common is that they all believe in love.
Now when I say that they believe in love that doesn't just mean the amazing, gooey, wonderful stuff. It also means the heart wrenching, hurts so much I'm not so sure I'm going to make it kind.
I believe in the sanctity of love, some people will read that and equate it with marriage, I do too, but when I talk about the sanctity of love, marriage is not the only thing that comes to mind. My love for God, my love for my son, my love of the people in my life that not only comfort me but challenge me, those things come to mind too.
Love is directly related to truth for me, and at the same time I can't believe that love isn't something completely supernatural. Unconditional love is something that I strive for every day but isn't something that I am always successful at.
It's so easy to "fall in love", or say that you love someone or something. This at times makes love not as magical or amazing as it is meant to be. This is something that I utterly adore about my husband. He only says those words when he really means it. Not because I said it first, not because I need to hear it but because he genuinely means it, which makes it that much more special.
I think that we all equate words with love, and of course words can convey love. So can silence, so can holding hands, so can acts of kindness that you weren't expecting. A friend who always shows up, a person that tells you what you need to hear instead of what you want. Someone who loves you enough to see that you could be hurting yourself and others with your words or actions and tells you so.
All people see love differently. All people need it. Writers and artists and philosophers have used it as a subject for years. Hollywood movies use it as a continual subject. But most times it's about the fun falling in love part, or the passionate painful love, very rarely is it about the enduring, tenderness that transcends all else and overcomes the worst of fates and circumstances.
Very few times is agape love (unconditional love) talked about. Love is not just good feelings and hugs. Love is messy, and dirty, and scary, and hard. Love is completely worth it.
Without love (and for me the love of God that fills me), I am a shell. I am faking it through life to always find the elusive love that I need instead of seeing it in the people around me without Him.
I once had a friend that I used to sit and talk to at a coffee shop in downtown Pittsburgh. We used to sit in the window seat and people watch to find everything wrong with the people that walked by, it was easy. Then one day we decided to change the game, we started looking for things that we liked about each person. That took some creative effort, it started with shallow things like people's shoes and ended up being things like "I love that she's lifting her face into the sun, she's beautiful when she does that". The point being that it's easier sometimes not to love than to see the heart and soul of another human being.
People think that love is subjective, that they get to pick and choose who they get to love and bestow their gift on. But I don't believe that. I think that loving another person, be it your best friend or the stranger that you held the door open for is why we are here. That if we are filled to the brim with love then we can't help but share it.
God specifically made me who I am to love every other person that I could reach. Not only to make sure that they knew that I loved them, but more so that he loves them. My sole purpose in love is to reflect the amazing love that I was made with, that gets me through my days and that is a direct reflection from the one true God that is the source of it.
Amen for the love in your life. I hope that in some small way I add to it.
K
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