No one really ticks me off as easily as my children. A little glance is so easily read and interpreted as a judgement or opinion...without question, the ones I love the most are the ones most likely to tick me off. If I could just love them with as much hospitality as I do the people I see or minister to each day! It is a dark valley sometimes, this love thing.
In my head at this moment, I see a kind of perfect love (perfect for me anyway)...and all I can do is be angry at it. I wish I understood why I choose to be angry at love, in any form. It makes me wonder if it is love that I am feeling, or perhaps something else. When humans are involved, I think I want them to be as perfect as God is perfect. I want them to not only know what I need, but give me what I need. And then I begin to see the truth about love.
Love is always a giving action. Love is a deliberate movement outward...beyond the boundaries of the body...into space...where chaos reigns...flying deliberately through miles of distracting winds and foul weathers...in the direction of its beloved...until it finds itself at home inside its one true love. I wish you could see what I am "feeling." Love is not a thing, it is an action. A giving away of self that always seems to empty into its own self that which is gives away. If it does not move in this way, then it is not love. It is always sacrificial. It is always life-giving: to the one who gives and to the one who receives.
It is as Paul writes in Corinthians. How less we would be as a Christian people, had Corinth been a loving group! How we might have missed out on a great truth that might never have formed in Paul's brain if the people in Corinth had not been so self-absorbed in their own abundance of 'things.'
When I am jealous or angry, I am convicted of the sin of not loving. When I want, I am convicted...and as I want...I remain in hell, which is the absence of love. All things can lead to love, all things created by God are good...but all have the potential of sending us into the dark valley.
And even there, we are comforted, if we have been told:
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of death,
I will not fear...for Thou art with me."
I may not feel God there...but I know God is there. And I think that is what Frances de Sales and Thomas A Kempis were describing about faith. Faith is a kind of knowing that God has not left us in the dark valley, even when we do not feel love...in that great alone-ness of our greatest existential fears...do I really exist? do I matter? why do I hurt? I am so alone? why is he hurting me? What will happen next? will the pain ever stop? why do I have cancer? why does my child have cancer? when will the suffering end? It there a place to go? do I dare to hope? when will this dark valley end?
Two people I love said exactly the same thing to me: they wanted to keep the other person happy. They did not seem happy, but they made their choices based on what would make the other person happy. Part of me sees that as a victim mentality, or a martyr mentality.
"I'm doing this for you, because I love you." And that may be completely and honestly true. Or it could be "I'm doing this to get you to stop bothering me." "I'm doing this so that I won't feel guilty." "I'm doing this so that I can feel good about being the 'better one.'" All of these responses are perfectly reasonable...but come across as manipulative. That is not love. There is such a fine line that defines the difference. At least, for me, there is a fine line...because love for me is still a very hard thing to grasp.
Love is sacrificial, but not the contemporary understanding of martyr. I'm thinking of the Mom who says, "Go ahead, leave. I'll be fine." A child can tell the difference in a flash. One is love...the other is guilt. And we dish out both randomly. Okay, I dish out both randomly. They happen that way because I am not completely clear on my own understanding of my own expectations.
"I want you to love me. I want you to need me. I want you to want me."
Isn't that how the song goes?
The teacher in me asks you: are those words of love?
If you say yes, you are right. If you say no, you are right. I think it depends on why you want such things.
I can hear God singing those lines and knowing that wanting God might me the greatest and most perfect thing to want. I can hear some guy singing those lines to me...and all I feel is manipulation. I wonder if that is how atheists think about God: a seductive being that just wants to run their lives. To make them weak. And vulnerable.
And love does that. It makes you weak. It makes you vulnerable. It makes you walk in the dark valley...but never to walk there alone.
All love comes with a price. It cuts out part of who we are...and changes it...but real love...changes us into something better, something more...and pleases us so much...we hand over the knife and say, "cut more," knowing how much it will hurt...but knowing also how much that love will grow. Love is a paradox. It kills that which we think we cannot live without and fills us with that which we can truly live with...
Okay, I'm going to stop here. For the moment.
Love,
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