I don't think I will ever grow weary of writing and pondering or meditating on the subject of love. There truly is no end to its depth. I find that every day I learn more, I dive deeper into the endless, all-encompassing warmth and reality of the abyss that love is.
When I wake in the morning, I wake to the face of love, kissing me out of grogginess into new light, with coffee in his hand for me. I get to see bright, sunshiney faces in mine that have somehow forgotten all of the strained endings of yesterday, and are exceedingly glad to see me again. As I go about my day, I randomly receive love through texts on my phone, and little lifts in my spirit, knowing my husband, family, or friends are thinking of me fondly. And this gives me strength. What if we came to the very real epiphany that we are a thousand (or more) times more loved even than the strongest of loves experienced here on earth, at all times, every second of each and every day?
Because we are.
By God.
I feel lately like the Grinch, when his heart grows three sizes.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGSs33DQ1F0
Our hearts are capable of stretching. Of expanding to contain more, and more, and more. LOVE.
Love for people near us, love for the kids our children bring home, love for the neighbor child who drops in 100 times a day, love for the homeless person spewing hateful words as you walk by, love for the family member you simply cannot understand, love for yourself.
We humans are among the most incredible life form there is, period. We are able to do things no other life form can. One of the most amazing things is that we can have passions like nothing else. It may sometimes be fun to compare our passions to that of nature: the unyielding, stormy sea; the wind at work on trees; rainbows in all of their color-displaying glory; waterfalls at full-force; a mother lioness with her baby cub; eagles soaring together in harmony.
But we humans are the only ones that I believe feel this fiercely about others. We were created for this, to love and love well.
Then why do we not wield this weapon of grace and eccentric beauty more proudly and with more purpose? Why do we often sigh and walk in lonely, stewing silence, scrutinizing, sizing up, and generally judging every figure we come across in swift, precisely painful strides of eye-sweepings and casting away those who could be our companions, friends, targets of said fierce love?
I think we do not know, perhaps, the power of this love within us, we are probably often not able to see past the short-sightedness of our own insecurities and self-loathing and fears of rejection in order to love.
So, this is the key: We love not to get love back. We love because we are gifted at it, and it is a skill to be fine-tuned and perfected daily, without fear of failing, because there is tomorrow to learn more, to get up and be filled and to pour out more of this luscious, liquid, cleansing, treasure of love.
If we assess a person that we come across, and immediately, rather than thinking: If I show this person affection or kindness, maybe they will think I'm weird and forward, and they will walk away, creeped out by me, what if we threw away those measly thoughts, and we just loved like Pollyanna loved? I have been thinking about that silly movie a lot lately, mainly her character, because so many of the townspeople were total assholes, and undeserving, of her pure, un-jaded, forthcoming love that she directed on those folks who either laid in bed sick and bitter, or enclosed in their houses behind windows, casting silent stones.
Undeserving...
Aren't all of us undeserving, really, but some of us just disguise it better than others?
When people push us away because they are angry or they seem to hate us, what if we kept coming back, with good intentions, to make sure that that person knew...they deserved love just as much as anyone?
What if we loved without expecting anything, ANYTHING, in return. Simply making it our mission to lift people up with unwarranted smiles, a hug, an actual listening ear, a coffee brought to a friend, flowers to a stranger, cookies to our neighbor?
Okay, okay, I know..... It's uncomfortable, and I am just baby-stepping into this strange, unknown territory of all of this love stuff, because honestly, I have really been held back by MAJOR issues with self-scrutinizing insecurities and fears of rejection. If I tried to be nice to someone, and they were in a bad mood that day and snapped at me, I would recoil for, like, months. Judging them as a jerk and hiding myself away from them so that I didn't have to feel the painful, searing loss of rejection the next time I saw them. But then it occured to me: Be nice again. Try again to smile and be friendly. And you know what? If they are crabby and rude again, try again the next time you see them. I have tried this, very slowly and with apprehension and falling on my hard head many a time, in my life, and I have seen nothing but good results. People want, NEED, to be loved. To feel wanted, listened to, heard, thought of, endeared to, LOVED.
If you say you don't, you're lying.
SO go. Get out there, and love the ones you got, the ones you don't, strangers, stray cats, mother-in-laws, irritating figures in your life who offended you in the past. Life is too damn short to hold grudges and be petty. Quit it. Go love.
Okay, I'm going to go take my own advice now.
I want to hear reports back. :)
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Friday, September 12, 2014
A Proposal Story
I was thinking last night about mine and Chris's beginning. Sometimes, to remember important things in life, you have to go back to the beginning. Not like living in the past, just recalling the things that first gave you joy and sprung up in your heart like a summer rainfall. (Something I miss, living here in California).
Our engagement didn't begin with flowers, a fancy restaurant, a moonlit walk, or anything well-planned and concocted in Chris's mind. It didn't even begin with a ring.
When he proposed to me, spontaneously in my room with the faded rose wallpaper at my father's house one evening, he sat with me on the edge of my bed, just talking as friends and totally in love, his arm protectively around me. He had his old, worn leather Bible in his other hand, and he opened it to the Psalms. He started to read to me from Psalm 37. When he got to the part that reads, "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart." He stopped and said that that was what we had found in each other. We had been doing just that: simply delighting in God. Being totally fixed on worshiping God in our lives.
You see, we both had led very messy lives previously. He had gotten a girl pregnant and married her at the age of fifteen, and I was partying hard and living chaotically, in a hellish relationship. We both seemed to be damaged goods, so to speak, until we found Jesus. Our lives transformed drastically when we began to walk that out in our separate lives. I had a child at age nineteen, which changed the course of my life, and he went off to rehab in San Diego.
When we met, things were not perfect. We both had a lot of baggage. Many said we would not last.
But we knew what we had found in each other. A friend, and more than that, surprisingly, a soul mate. It sounds gushy to say that, but it's true.
We just got each other, entirely. We still do.
Right after he read that verse to me, he dropped down to his knee on the wooden floor, and, looking me in the eye, my hands in his, he asked me if I would be his wife. I said yes. There was no ring, he said, we could pick it out together. It was not an important thing to either of us in that moment. When we were talking about that last night, we realized that the object of a ring becomes such a central thing in the beginning of engagement, whether it's due to tradition or symbolism. It becomes the centerpiece sometimes. But we talked about how our love was the centerpiece. It was the thing we glorified and danced around, celebrating, showing off to our friends and family. I had no ring, it was of no matter, until we got one, of course. Don't get me wrong, I was tremendously elated when we did get the ring, and I wore it proudly, and still do. But I am glad that our story is so simple in the beginning that it didn't need any frills or anything added to the simplicity that we were head over heels for each other and that was all we needed, and all we still need.
Our engagement didn't begin with flowers, a fancy restaurant, a moonlit walk, or anything well-planned and concocted in Chris's mind. It didn't even begin with a ring.
When he proposed to me, spontaneously in my room with the faded rose wallpaper at my father's house one evening, he sat with me on the edge of my bed, just talking as friends and totally in love, his arm protectively around me. He had his old, worn leather Bible in his other hand, and he opened it to the Psalms. He started to read to me from Psalm 37. When he got to the part that reads, "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart." He stopped and said that that was what we had found in each other. We had been doing just that: simply delighting in God. Being totally fixed on worshiping God in our lives.
You see, we both had led very messy lives previously. He had gotten a girl pregnant and married her at the age of fifteen, and I was partying hard and living chaotically, in a hellish relationship. We both seemed to be damaged goods, so to speak, until we found Jesus. Our lives transformed drastically when we began to walk that out in our separate lives. I had a child at age nineteen, which changed the course of my life, and he went off to rehab in San Diego.
When we met, things were not perfect. We both had a lot of baggage. Many said we would not last.
But we knew what we had found in each other. A friend, and more than that, surprisingly, a soul mate. It sounds gushy to say that, but it's true.
We just got each other, entirely. We still do.
Right after he read that verse to me, he dropped down to his knee on the wooden floor, and, looking me in the eye, my hands in his, he asked me if I would be his wife. I said yes. There was no ring, he said, we could pick it out together. It was not an important thing to either of us in that moment. When we were talking about that last night, we realized that the object of a ring becomes such a central thing in the beginning of engagement, whether it's due to tradition or symbolism. It becomes the centerpiece sometimes. But we talked about how our love was the centerpiece. It was the thing we glorified and danced around, celebrating, showing off to our friends and family. I had no ring, it was of no matter, until we got one, of course. Don't get me wrong, I was tremendously elated when we did get the ring, and I wore it proudly, and still do. But I am glad that our story is so simple in the beginning that it didn't need any frills or anything added to the simplicity that we were head over heels for each other and that was all we needed, and all we still need.
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