What Is Love? (Baby Don't Hurt Me)

This summer is flying by! My internship writing for this new wedding blog is so wonderful, I've gotten to travel a little bit (and still have Italy and Greece awaiting me next month!), and living with my best friend has been so lovely. Writing for another blog everyday has certainly cut down the time spent on this personal blog. But the truth is- sometimes there is so much to learn and see and feel and taste in life that it all needs time to marinate before it can be shared.

Have you ever had something someone taken away, leaving you feeling as if you don't have answers to any of life's important questions anymore? This seems to be a repetitive theme in my life story. And this summer, I've started to dig at these questions that have haunted me... alone. For the first time. The catch is that I'm learning to love the questions, rather than claw desperately for the answers. As Rainer Maria Rilke writes in Letters to a Young Poet,

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions. And perhaps, without even noticing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers."  


The main questions I have been wrestling with this summer: What is real love? What does it look like? Does it even exist, or is it fantasy? Can real love ever be lost? This is earthly love, between people, I'm talking about here. Without the powerfully persistent love of a Savior, my life at this point wouldn't make any sense. I may often feel as though I'm running through a dark tunnel bumping into things and injuring myself, but the flicker of a candle lights the road at my feet and reminds me that I'm still running in the right direction. But let's be brutally honest about people here- how many happy couples are still around after 15 years of marriage? And I'm not talking about couples who tolerate each other from opposite ends of the couch and who live in totally separate worlds. Are human beings actually capable of eternal fidelity and powerfully persistent love? I want to be optimistic, I really do! But I am scared. Of affairs. Of divorce. Of abuse and emotional absence and pride and everything else that has plagued humanity since the Garden. So far, I have a long way to go before I arrive at the answers to all my biggest questions. A new and humbling confession for someone who lives in a clear-cut, black and white kind of world. But it's about time I saw all the bright colors in life. ;-)

Here's a few observations I've been making though, recent roadsigns on my journey of learning.
1. The deepest freedom comes in learning to love people without needing them. The only thriving relationship that is need-based is between God and man, Savior and sinner. A woman filled with the unending fountain of love and peace that Christ offers-- is truly fulfilled and indestructible. Desperate love that looks to another flawed little individual for fulfillment will always. always. lead to devastation. I am so stinkin' guilty of this in every way. Always scanning the horizon for my Disney prince to come riding in on a white horse and rescue me from my locked little room. Sometimes I revert to trying to be knight in shining armor for a man... and trust me, I can't handle that kind of pressure for very long. It makes me understand how heavy the weight is for a man when I'm playing the distressed damsel. Donald Miller writes, "But then she said something I thought was wise. She said she had married a guy, and he was just a guy. He wasn't going to make all her problems go away, because he was just a guy. And that freed her to love him as a guy, not an ultimate problem solver. And because her husband believed she was just a girl, he was free to really love her too. Neither needed the other to make everything okay. They were simply content to have good company through life's conflicts. I thought that was beautiful." And so do I.


2. "When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can love them for who they are." A simple principle really, but it's taken me awhile. And boy is it liberating. My expectations of perfection from people I love aren't pushing people to greatness-- they're hindering my abilities to love them. Ouch. Anyone who has been friends with me long enough has seen my bossy-britches attitude at some point. It's tempting to convince myself that I'm doing "God's work" correcting behaviors and preaching from my scrawny soap box, with my plank-filled eye. I know my best friend will be smiling as she reads this from her desk at work. :-) Her friendship is one that has taught me the beauty of removing our strict expectations of people, ridding ourselves of pride, cultivating patience in ourselves, and loving relentlessly, even when especially when, its undeserved. Lord knows I ain't no picnic all the time. She knows that too. And she still loves me. If you ever watched Pollyanna as a kid, you know she was always playing the "glad game." We dug this movie out on VHS the other day (sweet nostalgia!). At one point she reads to the fire and brimstone preacher in her town a quote from Abraham Lincoln that is written in her gold locket: "When you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will." And we will always see and enjoy the good in people, the beauty in people, as long as we are seeking to discover it.

3. Finally, and maybe most importantly, "Love is an act of endless forgiveness." I'm beginning to believe that Forgiveness, that Grace, is the secret of Love, and of the entire world. Its message is echoed repeatedly in the Gospel, but it hasn't quite made it to romantic movies and Disney princess stories yet. It may not need to confuse and crush me that perfect love between two people might not be realistic.   Perhaps it isn't even possible to truly love someone until we've had to forgive them...in a big way. Perhaps the best husband and wife have only learned to be the best forgivers. Maybe there is no real separation between love and forgiveness...they are the Father and Son in the flesh. Intertwined and impossible apart from each other. Maybe really forgiving a person is the deepest way we can ever love them. A man may romance me with his sweet words, his tenderness and strength; and God has romanced me to Him through His beautiful creation, through His sweet promises and His tenderness and His strength-- but the deepest love God has shown me was through his Son. Through His Forgiveness. Perhaps man's most powerful and romantic love comes from this same source. For "The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness." -William Blake

Live the questions. Love the questions. All it takes is a little faith, and a lot of heart, sweetheart.

Catch ya on the flip side. xoxo. jlf