I would love to have a...
If I could just pin it down and bend it to my will...
Sorry, I've never not had an opening line as I write. Usually I have my first sentence fully formed before I ever get to my blog page and then it just free flows from there (no, I do not write these ahead of time, edit them to death and then post them--surprised? Don't be...God knows I am a recovering perfectionist and if I didn't just get out all I was thinking and feeling--with no looking back--it would never appear on this page. Hence the sometimes too much information/slightly strange posts. Hey, you're the one reading it! I didn't twist your arm!) Back to real life...blog life...whatever! (throws her hands up in the air)
The point is, I want to understand love. I want to have it figured out to the "T" so I no longer have to obsess about it the way our freakin' modern culture does constantly. I want to pin it down, strangle it if I have to and understand it completely. I don't want it to be messy or unpredictable or not go my way--I want it mine and I want it now.
And that's why I have so many issues! I am being slightly ironic in this post, but the way I feel about love and how I wish it would behave just goes to show how far I must go in order to learn its secrets. I hate that I can't control--but that is loves very definition. No one has it pinned down or gets it right--we all stumble and mumble through it and a few of us (maybe they really are the lucky ones--or maybe they're just normal people with the same insane amount of issues who choose to be fearless) make it to the marriage altar and vow to stay together FOREVER!
Oh, man...I'm like one of those guys with commitment issues--except I'M NOT A GUY!! Haha, you just have to laugh.
But seriously, forever freaks me out. Maybe just because I overthink EVERYTHING constantly and can't help but analyze my life to death (I also pray, which keeps me from being a witless ninny--God helps me face life :)) but the idea of marriage is a LONG idea...it doesn't end (in my book) until one or the other of you keels over and dies.
See, that would be the end of my thought process--expect I started to fall in love once. The madness of that infatuation stage goes beyond what they show you in movies with the staring into your eyes deeply and never wanting to look away and the taking a walk by yourself for an hour and a half, just talking it out with God to try to get him out of your head only to having it destroyed by seeing him for fifteen minutes. Listening to his stories of his childhood (really, only got to hear one--wish there were more) and hearing his heart as he talked about the world and just wanting to be around him. I couldn't get enough.
But I was too afraid--and stuck on my own idea about what my world would look like--and I wasn't fair and I sent mixed signals all the time and never, ever did I want to keep him from his dreams--and I didn't think those dreams could hold me. (Cause I'm my own God, right, and I know.) I didn't choose to be fearless, to risk it all and see what could be--I let it go...
And I just want to know what love is...because I think I botched my chance at learning to love fearlessly and I need God in the middle of all of that.
I was reading Thomas Merton today and I just got stuck on one paragraph and then it made me cry:
"Let us, therefore, learn to pass from one imperfect activity to another without worrying too much about what we are missing. It is true that we make many mistakes. But the biggest of them all is to be surprised at them: as if we had some hope of never making any."
My theme for the year is both "Letting Go" and "Consecration". I don't know how those two could possibly exist in the same--universe? mind? sentence? They're diametrically opposed to one another--they'll never come into rhythm together. But maybe that's how God works--in all the ways we'd never expect Him to, except that we gave Him a chance. Maybe that's exactly what love is--facing the impossible with hope, knowing that you are not alone as you take this journey. Maybe the only way to love is to let go of all your thoughts and intentions and place them in the hands of another, trusting that they care enough for you to take the best care of you that they are possibly able to. I never understood that--my mistake...
I have to get used to my mistakes--forgive myself and move on and quit being so surprised at what they are and what they teach me. My small life matters--and He will keep loving me past my own insecurities and failures for the rest of my life--I never have to question that. Can you imagine the goodness of God?
Oh I needed to get that off my chest.
So...this year I will--choose life, mistakes and all, and learn to enjoy it for what it is. I will allow my heart to heal and continue to hope. I will stop trying to control all my outcomes and lean into love, His good, never-changing love. Whatever is around my corners is good.
I just want you (dear reader) to know that my feelings for that boy--ah, man!--have changed. God taught me forgiveness (for the poor dear had no idea what he was doing, his affect on me) and not to be ashamed of how I had felt ("How could you let someone you knew so little of get so far into your heart?" was the lie from the enemy that used to shame me). My heart goes on...(cue Titanic music)
Love will make its way to me, steadily, softly--in the meantime, God has shown me more love in my lifetime than many know in any marriage. I am not ashamed to say that He is all I need. My life is in His hands--horrendous mistakes and all--and there is always hope!
There is always hope.
Some more Merton, from No Man is an Island:
"It is, therefore, a very great thing to be little, which is to say: to be ourselves."
"A multitude of badly performed actions and of experiences only half-lived exhausts and depletes our being."
"It may happen that a man who is able to accomplish very little is much more of a person than another who seems to accomplish very much."
"A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly."
"For we cannot make the best of what we are, if our hearts are always divided between what we are and what we are not."
"But, above all, we must learn our own weakness in order to awaken to a new order of action and being--and experience God Himself accomplishing in us the things we find impossible."
That's love for me.
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