Love.
On the surface you think it makes sense. You love someone because you click, or because it’s convenient, or because they love you. And you do the things that go with love: you spend time, you give things, you make sacrifices. But then time goes by and it’s become something else, too…
It isn’t that you’re lost in it; you become something else, maybe. You go through seasons when you can’t remember any of the reasons. You feel like you don’t have anything in common. You feel like so much of your relationship has been you hurting the other person, and you can’t take those things back, and maybe all the other love-things weren’t worth it. You can’t think of anything about the person that inspires you – you can’t even bring to mind things that used to inspire you.
But in the middle of all that - and you feel like you’re drowning, feel like you’ve been crazy to have ever thought differently – in the middle of it, you realize there’s still love. It’s there with a pulse, abiding even when you have nothing to feed it, no reason to believe in it. And it’s hard to even define what it is that’s present that we name love, but you know it is love.
Opportunities come, and they’re wrenching ones, to see some things that this love does. The person you love gets sick and you’re surprised that all you can think about is rushing over to hold the puke bucket and rub their back. Or you’re half awake but the first thing you think about is whether they’re ok. You hear them say that they don’t feel loved, don’t believe they’re lovable – and sometimes they don’t even say it, you just find it out – but you get the sensation that you were made for this: to prove that someone is loved, and you want to prove it with everything you have and are and do. Or they’re in such a dark place spiritually and you can’t stop praying, and the only things you can pray are that God will rescue them.
There are border-lands of this feeling, where you’re conscious of some reasons, where you enjoy loving them, even though it’s still hazy. You’re not sure what you’re dealing with, so you’re not sure how to act, but love isn’t about figuring everything out and making a plan.
But you know you’re in this state where whether you get anything out of it or not, whether it seems successful or not, whether there’s hope for things to be better ever again.
Or.
Not.
You know that none of those things will change the fact that you care about them more than you care about yourself.
It doesn’t mean that your life will end up entwined with theirs, nor that you’ll be asas significant to them. It just means that love doesn’t go away. You can choose to start loving; you might be able to choose to quit loving; I don’t know. I do believe, though, that you can’t just fade out of loving a person. Once you’ve invited it, it’s there.
You can still do the not-loving things. Your love can be weak or it can be caged by all sorts of other feelings and choices – but if it is, you’re going to be miserable, because the love will still be aching inside you.
It’s like a miracle, like begetting children: you do contribute, but you’re not doing it. You haven’t a clue where to begin to create love, and you’re not powerful enough to do it if you did. It’s a grace. God gives it.
To God be all glory.
