The Truth About Love

Real love is a choice. It is every day choosing to care for someone. Love is caring for someone even when they break your heart. It is being faithful to them even when they are not faithful to you. It is being honest even when they lie to your face. It is accepting them even when they completely reject you. It is loving even when they hate you. It is sacrificing all your anger, all of your hurt, all of your pain in order to give yourself for someone else. When you really love someone, you are not just in it for the good stuff. That is not love. It being there in the crappy stuff. It is loving them even when you are underappreciated and undervalued. It is being willing to be utterly miserable because of them and not giving up. That is when real love lives.

But let me tell you what love is not. It is not attraction. You cannot “fall” in love. Love cannot be explained solely by hormones and chemicals. Love is not that butterfly feeling in your stomach (although that is a part of it sometimes). Real love is proved when it seems the butterflies are dead. It is absolutely not even logical.

Who would purposefully let themselves be hurt for the sake of someone else? Who would sacrifice for no apparent benefit? Love would. And personally, I would rather not have someone “fall in love” with me. I would rather not be loved out of some sort of weakness. For example, they cannot help but love me. I want someone to choose me because they think I am worth it. Not because I’m pretty. Not because I’m talented. Not because I’m smart. And certainly not because I make them feel good. Because there are so many times when I am not those things.

Of course, love is absolutely incredible when everything is going good, and I am not saying you cannot love someone if you have not gone through struggles. However, when struggles do come, I want someone I can count on. I want someone who is going to stick around even when I put them through hell. I want to know that no matter what, they will always love me.

So I am going to be that person. I am determined that no amount of pain is going to stop me. No amount of rejection, no amount of lying, no amount of suckiness is going to make me stop loving. Because He loved me like that. And with His strength, I can do it too.

P.S. I realize this is very impassioned. I realize it may have some stronger language. However, I think that a matter of this importance calls for it.

Also, I want to say that I am not talking about romantic love. That’s what a lot of people tend to assume is real love. I am talking about every form of love, every kind of relationship- parent and child, brother and sister, friends, in addition to husband and wife.

The End

Lament

Dearest Father how we need you. We are a people of unclean lips. We wander around desperately seeking a means to escape the destruction our hands have wrought. We have no idea who we are or who we should be. All we know is hurt. We cannot bear the consequences. Children despising their parents. Wives hating their husbands. Widows tossed aside, and the elderly forsaken in a hospital room. Babies killed by their own mothers. The poor get poorer, the corrupt more corrupted. Nothing is untouched by the unforgiving hand of brokenness. Our obstinance has carried a price we cannot pay. We beg you, sovereign Lord, come and rescue us. We cannot wait for your kingdom. Cleanse us from our impurities, o Righteous One. We weep over our desolate state. We are a city of mourning.

My heart falters, 
   fear makes me tremble; 
the twilight I longed for 
   has become a horror to me. Isaiah 21:4

The Lord, the LORD Almighty, 
   called you on that day 
to weep and to wail, 
   to tear out your hair and put on sackcloth. 
 But see, there is joy and revelry, 
   slaughtering of cattle and killing of sheep, 
   eating of meat and drinking of wine! 
“Let us eat and drink,” you say, 
   “for tomorrow we die!” Isaiah 22:12-13

See how the faithful city 
   has become a prostitute! 
She once was full of justice; 
   righteousness used to dwell in her— 
   but now murderers! 
 Your silver has become dross, 
   your choice wine is diluted with water. 
 Your rulers are rebels, 
   partners with thieves; 
they all love bribes 
   and chase after gifts. 
They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; 
   the widow’s case does not come before them. Isaiah 1:21-23

 Therefore I said, “Turn away from me; 
   let me weep bitterly. 
Do not try to console me 
   over the destruction of my people.” Isaiah 22:4

It seems as though my eyes have been opened to the reality of sin. It seems so hopeless, father, it seems like nothing can be completely good. Everything has a downside, everything is corrupted. Everything is pain. I know this is not what I was meant for. I know my soul belongs to a different kingdom, but I cannot wait. I cannot take it anymore. I want you so much. Every day brings more realizations of our desperate condition. I cannot bear to be apart from you any longer. Rescue me, father, rescue me. I need you.

The Coin

It just so happened that on February 21st at precisely 4:07pm and 24 seconds, a relatively unremarkable occurence took place. A little boy whittled a wooden coin.

The boy's mother praised his handiwork. However, aside from this, the coin was born in silence. The little boy's brow knit together as he studied the object of his labor. "It is good." He pronounced confidently, and lovingly tucked it into his pocket. As he continued on with the pressing business of play that all little boys are burdened with, he would often pull his coin out of his pocket to admire his precious creation.

One day, however, tragedy struck. When the boy was performing his ritual examination of the coin, it rolled off the tips of his fingers and into the dirt. Before he could even bend down to pick it up, the coin continued it's escape into the great expanse that is the backyard and quickly out of view.

You see, coins are very fickle things. They are not content to stay in one pocket, even if that pocket is quite spacious and mostly free of lint. They must always be travelling from one pocket to another, seeing the sights, smelling the smells, and feeling the feels.

In this respect, our coin was no different. It was not safety and stability it desired, it was excitement. Coins are like that. However, there was something the coin did not realize. It was not a shining penny freshly minted, it was a small chip of wood. And most people, who are not little boys, have no desire to carry pieces of wood around exchanging them for goods and services.

So the coin rolled and rolled through the grass, dirt and mud. It rolled and rolled into a crowded street getting stepped on, shuffled about, scratched up, and even licked by an enthusiastic terrier. No one picked it up, no one put it in their pocket, and no one loved it. According to this new world, wooden coins have no value.

Meanwhile, our little boy frantically searched for his coin. How could it desert him like that? Didn't it know how much he loved it? After scouring the backyard, he extended his search to the neighborhood, and then to the city. Nooks, crannies, highs, lows. The little boy looked everywhere for his precious coin.

Just as he was about to give up, the boy looked in the last lonely corner. Things are always in the last place one looks, you know. And to his great joy, the coin was there. Dirty, nicked, scarred and dejected but there.

The little boy scooped up his prodigal friend and ran back to his house where he promptly went to work. He washed and scrubbed, sanded and shaved. For at least 47 minutes (which, if converted to little boy time, is roughly equivalent to an eternity or twice a bajillion years?, our hero attended to his friend. 

At last, the coin emerged as smooth and clean as the day it was born. Something was still wrong, however. The coin's heart needed sanding and washing too. However glad it was to be back in the hands of its boy, a thought still nagged at him.

This thought left him so distraught that aloud he exclaimed (this is quite a feat as coins do not generally have vocal chords), "How can this boy love me? I am not valuable." Overhearing this declaration, the boy lovingly replied, "my dear, silly, little coin, you are quite mistaken. I do not love you because you are valuable, you are valuable because I love you."

There is nothing so beautiful as a boy and his coin.

THE END

Autumn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssja-V5LgpI&p=5A5F8AE0F789EF48&playnext=1&index=27

I love fall at night. Walking on the path back to my apartment, I hear the wind coaxing leaves into speech as they skitter across the ground and whistle in the trees. It seems as though they are whispering to me. Telling me perhaps of what lies ahead on the path, maybe bemoaning their descent from the heights at which they were born, or singing the praises of the One who gave them birth. The crisp air does not yet bite at my exposed skin, but it nibbles at the end of my nose and pinches color from my cheeks.

I love the movement of fall. Everything is changing, everything is rushing forward. It is fluid, it is sweeping, it is tumbling. It excites me in way that I do not often comprehend.

On the other hand, I love the consistency of fall. Ever faithful, it chases the summer heat from earth and ushers in the bitter cold of winter. Every year, as the sun's visits grow shorter and shorter, it dutifully courses through the landscape painting color on everything it touches. Year after year after year it always comes to call. It is safe, it is consistent, it is comforting.

Hmm sounds like someone I know...