In Defense of Love

Alley by the Lake by Leonid Afremov

Thoughts. Feelings. Sparked and felt. Deeply. In the blood. In the head. In the heart.

Love.

Topic of a Facebook (yes there is that dirty word again.;) conversation/ debate last night.

I have long believed that love is not solely a feeling but a very conscious decision that we choose to make. Or not make as the case may be.

We choose to love. We also feel love. But the problem...the words I wrote that perhaps sparked the conversation last night were that I believe to base love only on a feeling is immature and lacks a certain understanding of what it means to truly love another. I don't consider these words offensive. I consider them true.

To feel love is certainly valid. Worthwhile. Wildly exhilarating and fun. It's a pleasure and a pain. To feel. But feelings fluctuate daily. Feelings can not be relied upon to carry us through the hard stuff. Feelings will fail us in the end. If we place our trust in feelings alone, we place our trust in something that changes constantly. We excuse ourselves from the hard work of really loving.

To decide to love on the other hand, that is powerful. That is the essence of mature love. To choose to take responsibility for love. To wake up in the morning and not feel in love with ones partner; to feel upset, impatient, furious with ones child; to truly dislike someone and yet to decide to love them regardless of feeling. To choose to love through action and word because, make no mistake, it is up to us. Love, the active verb. Love, the challenge. Love, the hardest and yet most rewarding part of living.

Where as if love is only a feeling, nothing more, how very little we have to rely on. We can wake up in the morning then and not feel in love with our partner and so determine based on feeling alone that the spark is gone, it was lovely but now I feel nothing for you, I won't fight for you and our love...I will leave.

Love can be romantic, passionate or calm and peaceful. It can be everything we hope for and long for it to be. But one thing it must be in order to survive, is stronger than whatever we feel it to be. It must be more. It takes the force of will. The determination (sometimes grim determination) to put feelings aside and get down to the gritty, frustrating process of putting love into action.

For our partners. For our children. For our family. For strangers. For those who we genuinely do dislike.

I'd like to share another post with you. I wrote it in when we were in Sri Lanka in the thick of the final stages of our adoption; at the beginning stages of learning to love a little boy who wasn't "ours" biologically. Suspended Time http://thecolorspectrum.blogspot.com/2009/10/suspended-time.html

I believe we all should strive for a broader understanding of love. It's a big issue. :)

Nights Spent Staring At The Sky

"...I am fully known." 1 Corinthians 13:12

No one fully knows another person. No one ever fully knows themselves.

Yet we are fully known. I am fully known by the One who created me.

I have never had a private moment. I have never had a secret. I have never been able to nurse my brokenness, my pain, the hurt that is always there at the very core of all of us, alone. I've never sat up at night, cold and quiet, arms around my knees, locked in a lonely world of self by myself. Never cried a tear or smiled a smile that wasn't noticed.

I am fully known.

Every: flaw, failing, desire, dream, prayer, hurt, joy, pleasure, thought, ambition, frustration, humiliation, fear, memory, word, secret.

Everything that has ever been done or said to me is known. Everything I have ever done or said or thought is known.

Rather than find this invasive and alarming, I find this profoundly beautiful and comforting. Not because I have nothing I wouldn't wish to be known but because all the many many things I don't understand about myself, the mystery of my own thoughts and actions and fears, the things I don't know...can't remember...even the me I can't remember due to the clutter and chaos of the world pushing it's way into my mind, is fully known.

And despite every imperfection, unkindness, judgmental thought and hurtful word, lack of courage, faith, trust, and even character at times, I am fully known and fully loved.

There is a core me. A perfect me. Underneath the dirt of just living, underneath the lack of innocence, the daily failings, there is a perfect woman. A woman who someday will reach her full potential.

So this is the knowledge that I will carry with me when I feel alone, uncertain, like a stranger in a strange land. When I wake up at night and miss it all; the all enveloping warmth and love of family and friends, a community . When I sit up in the evening and feel unknown, unseen and as though I am not understood and also as though I don't understand this place and tightly controlled culture that I exist in while trying not to conform to it. When I feel alone in my struggles, alone with the worst of myself...I choose to remember I am not unknown or unseen. I am fully known by the One who matters. Fully known.

What a relief.