The Sappy Post Pt. 2

The closest marriage to me, my own parents’, crumbled just a little over a year ago. I spent the rest of the year dissolving the ideologies that I saw evidenced in that disintegration of a holy bond. Like any 17-year-old female, I wanted to love; but like any child of God, I felt the weight of that responsibility. I knew that love was an emotion and that love was also a choice. Yet I also recognized that, realistically, that knowledge doesn’t prevent selfishness or the fact that we’re all…well, human. I was keenly aware that my eagerness to love wasn’t a guarantee that it would happen.

May 12, 2014

:: I don’t know who you are yet. You’re someone I haven’t met yet and that’s okay.

I miss you and I’ve never met you.

I adore you and I don’t know you.

I love how your hands feel and I’ve never held them.

I can’t get you out of my head and I don’t even know who you are.

I love being yours’ and I belong to nobody.

I have so much for you and I can’t find you.

But I’m looking. I won’t stop looking. ::

Nevertheless, I dwelt on what it would mean, to pour myself into the life and soul of another creature. To sacrifice, to know, to love. You may recall having been subjected to such thoughts around last July, via my blog. And I don’t think those thoughts were wrong. I think they were startlingly correct. But they stemmed from an idealistic view of what I had never really experienced, and thus weren’t complete.

So this is The Sappy Post Pt. 2.

Now, I have loved. I have begun this journey of learning the thoroughfares of another human’s heart, the cracks and fissures in their soul, the vast expanses of their mind, the gentle, human throbs of their emotions. And this is what I’ve learned about the definition of love since then. This is The Sappy Post, but from the other side.

Love is a less concrete definition than I originally realized. One of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis has always been, “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” And that’s beautifully true. It sums up the self-sacrifice part of love, which is constantly necessary and is something I’ve explored acutely. But I’m finding that love is too vast to be condensed into that. It used to fit neatly into that quote. It doesn’t really fit as effortlessly into those confines anymore.

My lovely friend Anne said this the other evening, and it’s deeply true: “I always think I know what love is, but every time I do, I learn something else that adds to it.”

This isn’t what I thought love would feel like. This isn’t what I thought intimacy would feel like. It exceeds, and also simply isn’t, what I anticipated. Love isn’t anything like what people portray. It’s not able to be portrayed. It’s too intricate, deeply specific, personal, and vividly felt to be casualized. It’s kind of a deep mess. I mean, it’s two souls colliding. Sometimes the collision feels more like a hushed intertwining, the quiet slip of one person’s heart into another’s. Sometimes it feels more like a messy-bubbly-laughably-clumsy entangling of everything that could possibly be contained within the hearts of two humans. A collision like that is breathtaking, unexpected, exceeding words and even exceeding definition. I can’t define it. I can tell you what love is like, but I can’t tell you what it is. No word is exhaustive enough to comprehensively represent every facet of what love is.

I’ve compared love to a watercolor painting, and it is quite like that. The colors bleed together; they blend gradually and quietly. They unexpectedly interlock the watery flecks, and it forms a masterpiece. A masterpiece is formed by each color losing its striking definition and being gracefully intermingled with another shade. The water droplets force them to unify.

It’s (sometimes painful) familiarity counterbalanced with selfless understanding. Some days, that understanding is as simple as, “He’s not always like this; I’ll give him some space.” Other days, understanding looks more like forgiveness. It’s also cheerful acceptance counterbalanced with rumbling change. Paradoxically, love will enable the other person to accept you as you are, but it can also shape you both into entirely different people. It has this way of chipping at your scratchy edges to make you more like Christ, and more compatible for each other. Love is a sanctification process. It’s purifying. 

Honestly, love is God. That’s the one word that is comprehensive enough to define every aspect of love. God embodies every component of love, and to earnestly love is only attainable by first loving him. Untainted love is the very essence of God, in all its sanctification, vastly encompassing understanding, unconditional nature, grace, and forbearance. God is holy; God is faithful; God is the source and sustainer of the love which we pour out. To love is not to exclusively seek intimacy, sacrifice, or the best for/of another person. To love is not to seek affection, familiarity, or commitment. To love is to seek God, his glorification, and to seek experiencing more of his character.

And it requires little effort to lose sight of that profound purpose of love. It’s easy to begin to define love by the coffee-runs downtown, the hand to hold, the steady companion at the end of a long day and at the beginning of uncharted territory. It’s easy to know the person you love by the level of familiarity you share with them, and the difficulties and joys expressed therein. Or even by the inside jokes you develop, or the fact that when you can’t finish your food, you have someone there to help you. (I’m looking at you, Sam.) And praise God that affection, familiarity, and deep companionship are parts of love. It’s literally the best. But it’s cheap, if not stacked onto the foundation of becoming more like Christ.

Love is God’s gift to man. He has loved us; we pour out that love into each other’s souls. And the more we love as he has loved us, the deeper we understand our creator, his character, and his glory. Love faithfully not because your person is faithful, but because God is faithful. Love wholly because God loves wholly. Love deeply because God’s love is deeper than even our comprehension. Love fiercely, because that is the nature of the love God exhibits for you.

“To love is to have glimpsed the face of God.” –Victor Hugo.

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