Keeping in Step: Love

In my life love has taken many different forms:

Family

Friendship

Sports

Food

Romance

Sex

In the midst of these forms, I have found that love can mean one thing in one moment and something quite different in the next.  In the same way that most of life's initial events are colored by an interpretation we get from those closest to us, love can be seen in the same way.  I am grateful for those who have loved me without expectation for recompense.  Those who have loved me knowing that I may never fully understand what is being done.  I am reminded of those who in my seasons of teenage angst, loved me by granting me insight to this day I still use.  They were patient with me as I found my way, lost it, found it again, and then lost it one more time.  They understood that the darkness that had fallen over my life was but for a moment and if I would press on - the light would shine one day again.  

But then I remember those who were not so loving.  Those who were unwilling to wait on me as I figured it out.  Those who "knew" their wisdom was greater than that of anyone else.  Their condescending looks and hateful words scarred me fearlessly.  Those people who never could see the end of the tunnel, they could only see me in my current situation.  Their "love" was more expensive to receive than it was to give it away.  To be fair, I only knew one person like this.  Consistently my enemy.  Fought me at every turn.  No matter what I thought, there was always something wrong with it.  There was no love in the many responses I got. The work I did, the efforts I made, were all failures. 

I fought this person relentlessly throughout childhood, teenage years, and continue to fight into adulthood.  He shows up when I want to exercise love, but am uncertain how to.  He is there when I wake up in the morning and when I retire for the evening.  He is most antagonizing and unkind.  He knows no patience nor is he willing to accept responsibility for anything he does.  He is selfish and knows nothing of love.  In the end, he is my greatest enemy.


And in the end, he is me.   This is why, love can be many different things, because it did not originate with me.


"God, who needs nothing, loves into existence holy superfluous creatures in order that he may love and perfect them.  He creates the universe, already foreseen- or should we say 'seeing'? There are no tenses in God- the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is, time after time, for breath's sake hitched up.... This is the diagram of love Himself, the inventor of all loves."   C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves