Love: A Sentence Enhancer
I tend to find myself speaking in extremes; two tiny words that make up a large portion of my vocabulary are "love" and "hate." I love using the word "love." It probably annoys everyone and likely confuses them about my affections toward a youTube video or leaf I found on the ground, but I am perpetually using it as a sentence enhancer. So I'm a romantic—sue me! I love this cat picture above. It is probably one of the greatest things I've ever seen. I LOVE IT. I love the color composition; I love the energy; I love the balance. I hate bell peppers...which I think is what is sneaking up on the cat.
Along with bell peppers, I don't love writer's block. It’s been a struggle to get a blog post up lately. I’ve started at least five potential posts…but felt no peace with what I was writing at the time. The Lord orchestrates things well though. Lately as He has been overwhelming my spirit with the concept of love, it has come to be the only appropriate thing to post about this month.
“‘Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or etc...’ -Paul”
I meet with a group of students on Thursdays and we gather for mutual encouragement. We memorize scripture together, invest into each others spiritual and secular lives, and exhort one another. At the beginning of April we started memorizing chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians…the love chapter if you’re unfamiliar. That being said, Paul’s definition of love has been digging its way deep into my heart and mind.
This weekend I worked at a youth retreat in the tiny town of Troy Texas; my 5th year out of 6 years to work this retreat and I love it. Out of all the Dnows I’ve worked, I always leave Troy’s feeling the joyous weight that God is doing something special with that church. I never know why…the Spirit just moves me when I’m there.
What amazes me about weekend retreats—and especially this one—is how quickly and deeply rooted love can grow. I love the students I worked with this weekend. It was painful to leave. It always is.
“Maybe the purpose of short, sporadic loves is to fuel our longer loves.”
Two thoughts have come from this weekend. First, I was convicted of the way that I love my own students. In full transparency, I get with some select few teenagers and cannot wait for them to go home; but in Troy it was hard to leave the students I had known only for 48 hours. Sometimes I feel we attribute our feelings and its fickleness toward the atmosphere, and I’m not saying I’m not prone to being affected by the loud music, unrestrained youthfulness, and late nights, but part of me wants to—and does—believe that the depth of these relationships is different than a mist which vanishes. From here, I feel the conviction is drawn from my weakness in love toward those that I am with daily. Maybe the purpose of short, sporadic loves is to fuel our longer loves.
Second, how can the Lord bear to live with such an eternally deep rooted love? Like our skin, our souls feel the tiniest pricks and scrapes that assault our love. When it is eternally applied I cannot imagine the number of band-aids the Lord would go through.
I’m going to leave you with an excerpt from my journal. I’m not sure if I wrote it to flow like a poem or if it is just a thought process…we’ll call it a freeform poem.
How deep sitting and funny the pain that love feels.
How pure the emotions mutually and tangentially teeter on the fine line between bitterness and an idolatrous obsession. It’s funny the things that pain love too. One would almost choose a knife assuming it would be less painful or damaging than have love ache. Love gives no choices though, and speaks not in options. For with love there is but one thing to consider.
“But a watchful love is a powerful love.”
Love lies so elegant and exposed and exposes what is elegant. Never dull and never growing dull, whether it is young or aged, it carries a maturity. Love’s wine is always sweet; never bitter…well…only ever bitter when it must take a seat and watch. But a watchful love is a powerful love. Never prepared, but always powerful (like newly picked spices) and always peaceful. Love that damages is not love at all though; it is life that—in an ironic sense—damages. Love picks up on mannerisms and tones brought about by life.
But it is not love that gives life its worth; it is life that grants meaning to love. May my life produce love that is stable yet wild, territorial yet open wide. And because its capacity and expanse are so vast, may it find beauty in everything in between and be so consumed with what it finds that nothing else could fill its affection while—at the same time—never be able to satisfy its every cavity.
How deep sitting and funny the joy that love feels.