LOVE is...

We all (should) remember "love means never having to say you are sorry."   What a crock!

Or  Tom Cruise saying in a movie I can't recall its title....."You had me at hello."  Again what a crock.

What, me  dispeling the myth of "love?"  Yes.  Love is not meant to be a myth.  It is meant to be shared between people, regardless of their sex, because LOVE is NOT sex.  Love is an intimate relationship between people.  And intimacy does not have to mean sex.  Instead, as a very wise writer pointed out....intimacy if taken phoentically is INTO-ME-SEE.

Most of us hide from this type of exposure, mainly because one of the two parties present doesn't feel worthy as a participant.  If we look at our naked bodies we (well, most of us anyway) inwardly cringe.  No way do I want THAT on display.....it's bad enough I have to look at it.  Well, and I'm chuckling as I write this, because my BFF just this morning called me an overthinking upside down friend.... INTO-ME-SEE is the allowance of our naked souls to be seen and shared with another.  I will just add, that God sees all anyway, so for this context I'm speaking about sharing our souls with one another.

What is love?  Go ahead, re-read 1 Corinthians 13.....I'll wait.  Yeah, all that, but what does that mean, the stuff of not being  jealous, about being kind and not proud....etc?   What, oh wait, you mean we are supposed to take that quite literally?  Oh, I thought it was just something nice said at weddings!!!  Am I the only one saying ouch?  I don't need a band-aid here, I need a darn tourniquet.

The thing about love (my view) is that it is not about us, but instead is an extension of us for the recepient.  Huh?  Let me ask a question.  When you love someone, do you want your own way?  If you answered that any other way than to say yes, you are kidding yourself.  Of course you want your way...your way is to be loved back.  Can you demand that someone love you back?  Well, you might try, let me know if it works for you!  No, love is about wanting to reach out to the person whose attention you are trying to attract and meeting them in their space.  The sad part of love is that all too often, it is one-sided.  Either one is too needy or one doesn't know how to receive it and thus patterns are formed until one day you wake up and find yourself saying....hey, wait a minute, what about me? ( if your are the "lover") or what happened? ( if you are the "lovee.") 

When was the last time anyone met you where you needed to be met?  Love can't be forced and as my friend was reading to me out of the book "The Shack".....God even loves us enough NOT to force our hands.  Anything forced isn't love, but control.  Love to me is active listening and involves hearing what might not be necessarily said, or maybe even said in a passing way.  It is then portrayed through action because we all know that talk is cheap (or should know) and is heard and most often filtered down to drivel when action doesn't back it up.  Love is the sharing act and once again, I'm not talking sex.  Sometimes the activity is a surprise, sometimes the planning of the activity can be part of the fun of sharing as well.  What keeps us from enjoying life is that because we are so darn busy and need to plan even our bathroom breaks, we miss out on opportunities that allow two people to demonstrate their acknowledgement of one another.  Bluntly said, look at your calendar and see if the 3rd Saturday from never is available because I need between 15 - 30 minutes to see you to let you know I care.

Wow, and to the one friend who likes to say to me....no one has "pissed" in my cornflakes this morning.  I understand responsibilities, yeah, I like to eat and sleep with a roof over my head.....but when material things come before loved ones, I guess you could say I do overthink and am culturally upside, backwards, inside out or whatever it is I am.  Am I angry....maybe.  The one constant in everyone's life is that they want to be what they were created to be and that is LOVED!

How do you ask for it?  Can we even walk up to our families and just say.....love me without getting some strange look, or maybe hearing them say back to you, "I do love you."  Huh?  Obviously we aren't getting the message.  So, how do we get the message....again, I point back to active listening.  I have a friend who loves horses.  I saw this google thing and it talked about a trail ride.  Neither she nor I have much in the way of money, and yet God seemingly let Goggle intervene and a deal was made apparent to me via the web.  This is a small gesture of love, but hopefully it makes her feel heard and valued (at least I hope so) and guess what, I get something in return, the pleasure of enjoying her enjoyment and maybe even some of my own, once I get passed the fear of falling from a moving animal.  I also get the opportunity to pursue other things I enjoy....the outdoors and photography opportunities.

I am blessed to be married to a man who is very generous.  For our 25th wedding, he asked me what I wanted.  I'm simple, I said something with the family.....he took that idea and ran with it and unbeknownst to me until shortly before the event occurred, he planned a cruise for the entire family.  There were 31 of us all total and he paid for all the immediate family adults!   Those with kids, paid for their own kids. Talk about love. This cruise happened 5 years ago and is still talked about as one of the best vacations any of us have ever taken.  And now....as now, as he faces an uphill battle with cancer, the care, love and support we are being shown is beyond description in its aura!  Family is THE most important relationship to me.  But and I truly mean this, Family is not just blood relatives.  Family is those who love you despite your faults and care enough to want to share in your life without terms and conditions. 

For God so LOVED the world, he gave his begotten Son..... If we can't understand the concept of God, how can we possibly understand the magnitude of HIS gift?

That is what love is.......

Looking up!

BArb