I was on a run the other day and got to thinking about love. Now, this could be simply because right now, I gotta say, I feel loved. Not only that, but I can genuinely say that I love so many people in my life. And this love is so deep and rich and powerful to me. It truly is a mystery. A mystery the way I can hear a beloved friend or sister speak and just beam with appreciation and awe. It’s that moment when I feel deeply connected to them, almost as if I created them. I know that sounds odd. But it’s this weird…pride and protective feeling I get when I truly feel love for someone.
It made me think about a conversation I recently had with my dear friend and former New Wine intern, Crystal. We were talking about how dangerous love is—yet it’s something that we all pine for. Odd, isn’t it? Love is the very thing that breaks us down, ruins us, and makes us crazy, pathetic, annoying, delirious and sometimes a bit awkward. We lose our common sense. We forget or misplace our priorities. (I mean, I never do that. But I hear it happens.) We go BLIND over this creepy thing called love. Yet we all want it, and when we get it, we are so “in love” that when the person we love hurts us, we are shocked. Dismayed. Beside ourselves. Our guard was down because, well, we were in love, silly.
Are we all masochists? We are then so surprised that that this beautiful, irresistible love hurt us and we become broken, scarred, terrified.
The crazy thing is, we all love imperfectly. Yet love in this world is not only absolutely necessary and the glue that holds humanity together, but it is also the glue that sticks to our fingers, peels our skin off, and makes us go mad. It’s also a force that, when mismanaged, can turn ugly. It is crazy to me to think that the only love that is perfect and full is our Creator’s love. And this love still sometimes hurts, sometimes shocks, and sometimes hides from us. But it’s the most perfect love we will ever experience. It’s also the perfect love that we must learn from and imitate. God loves recklessly. How are we allowing love to manifest and truly be fostered in our lives?
Loving cautiously to me, is scared, untrusting love. It’s rancid love. I want to step out in faith on love a bit better. I want to know what it’s like to truly love my co-worker who can never seem to utter one positive thing about anyone, bless my roommate who can never seem to grasp that beautiful step of moving the dishes from sink to dishwasher, extend a helping hand to my overwhelmed colleague who, quite frankly, is in way over her head (no, I’m not talking about you) and awkwardly build a relationship with someone who is so different from me I don’t even know where to begin. But again, that requires stepping outside of myself and trusting that love truly does cover a multitude of sins. I guess my question is, do we really believe this enough to risk allowing this sort of crazy love into our own lives? Or are we trusting more in our own fears, wounds and pride that we are depriving ourselves from experiencing this deep, reconciling love?
Excellent words, my dear Kels. I believe that the magic of real love is that it comes with no (or few?) expectations. Love destroys us because so often the object of our love disappoints us. Even God, I’m afraid to say, often disappoints my expectations (like how I’d appreciate some swift and certain justice for the world’s millions of trafficking victims. I’m gravely disappointed). And I do reel.
But the crazy-town, awesome, life-giving love you speak of must come with no strings attached. I love you because I love you. I give you my love, not because you deserve it or are necessarily trustworthy, but because He is trustworthy and He has put something in me that make me want to give love to His wacky creations. And because I just want to give it to you. I don’t know what you’ll do with it but I commit to letting you keep it. Even if you turn out to be a sucky caretaker.
“the glue that sticks to our fingers, peels our skin off, and makes us go mad” Thank you Kelsi. I hear you! What is it about love…it seems to cause us to wake up, like we were sleeping before. Our stuggle is a fear, a pain, a scar that still bleeds from love so “mismanaged” it destroys, which isn’t love at all. What He offers us is not “mismanaged” love, but precisely and gently administered hearling love, which overcomes our own determined ignorance. I see this sticky love in the kids at Fox Run, they stick, almost literally to my side. They cling and chatter and hover around me…and I need it, all their dirty faces and ragged clothes. They are both hard to love (so disobedient and often smelly) and so easy to love (needy, funny, strange, and bored). I pray that I don’t “mismanage” their love or my own, that I truly cause a sticky sweet love that lasts longer than I do, or they do.
Amen, sister. That’s what I appreciate so much. When I actually do put my self out there to experience love (like you are with the tikes at Fox Run), it’s this strange gift and blessing that makes me wonder, “why don’t I do this more often?” I don’t even know what is happening, but when I open myself up to others to give or serve or simply listen or smile, it’s like they are baby-stepping me through experiencing the simple, child like love we can have with one another that causes a world of change in our hearts.
This post reminds me of something I wrote a year ago. At the time, I was questioning just how much I loved Christ and those around me. That question still haunts me to this day. I think it goes along with what Kelsi is saying in many ways.
Paul gave up everything that was familiar in his life for the sake of the Gospel. He left his physical comforts behind, and the tradition he once knew to follow God with reckless abandon. This type of devotion would ultimately lead to his execution. In looking at Paul’s life and all the suffering that he endured, I am blown away by the sacrifices He made. Paul had a love for God that so permeated his heart, mind, and soul that He couldn’t have been devoted to anything but the Mission of God. He was willing to put all things aside for the sake of his neighbor, and the message of the Gospel.
I have been asking myself lately, what am I willing to sacrifice for God? In my own little world, where sadly my comfort is probably my number one priority. I’ve noticed that I am only willing to follow God if He agrees to let me live a comfortable, easy life, surrounded by those who love me and are easy to love. God never promised me comfortable or easy. What he does promise is unconditional love and provision, and still I don’t trust Him to take care of me in the uncomfortable, unfamiliar situations in my life when I am called to reckless abandon and crazy love. To give up family, friends, money, and possibly my life…I would have to be crazy in love with Christ and my neighbor. That kind of love is just too uncomfortable, and Honestly, I don’t know if I love God or my neighbor enough to make that kind of sacrifice.
Thankfully It is God’s love, through the Holy Spirit that will compel us to live in reckless abandon for the sake of our neighbors and the world. It is this kind of love that compelled Christ as well as the Apostle Paul. This kind of crazy love drives us to do the unimaginable in the world’s eyes. To give up our comfortable lifestyle and our independence for the sake of someone else is crazy. To participate in the kind of crazy love that was shown by Christ on the cross for the sake of those who had forsaken him, or the apostle Paul, as he was stoned and beaten, has the power to wash over a multitude of sins and usher in redemption. That’s the kind of love I crave, and that’s the kind of crazy love that I want to pour out to others.
Chrissi–So true about the “no strings attached”. You are right, this is what makes love, love: it’s not earned or contingent upon what one can do for me. And this is what then makes it so messy: loving broken, selfish creations no matter how selfless and beautiful the love will no doubt, hurt, disappoint and scar. But it’s still love and it’s here to stay no matter how often it is rejected. And thank the Lord he doesn’t pull this love away from us when we abuse it or give it away to those who misuse it.
Kelsi, I have been ruminating for a couple days now on your desciption of “feeling connected” to people you love “almost like I created them.” That doesn’t sound wierd at all-in fact, it’s profoundly beautiful. I think it was Pascal who said of God, “In loving me you made me lovable.” Thats so backwards to my logic and yet something tells me it’s true. I’ve heard for a long time that God is a lover but I guess I always just assumed that his love is of the “cautious” variety. Wow, Where did I get that idea from?
Ashley I really appreciate your honesty when you wonder if you even love God enough to abandon comfort (whatever that may look like) in the name of recklessly following him. I wholeheartedly resonate with that. I’ve been wrestling with the sobering conviction that, truth be told, right now I am ultimately lord of my life. That is humiliating and terrifying and sad to identify, but it’s true. Ultimately, I answer to my self, and then I ask God to forgive me and renew me and then, once again, become the Lord of my life. Then fear and doubt comes in and thus goes the vicious cycle. I am addicted to my self, my own worries, comforts and reputation. I want to look good. I want God to look good too, but really just so “the God who is mine” looks good. (I don’t want to be made a fool.) It really is difficult to allow an invisible, silent, mysterious, unpredictable God own us. That’s when it just boils down to earnestly praying every day that he will transform our hearts and break us down so he can live in us. Because I absolutely know that this aint happening by my own effort or will. I guess that’s where the abandonment comes in. It’s crazy though that the most important thing (God living in us) is the one thing we really can’t “work” towards. All we can do is ask for him and let him live in us and choose to believe he will. It’s crazy. I really don’t get it but I thank God that it’s his love that is sufficient and not mine.
Kelsi,
If one is to love, one has to do with reckless abandon. Alfred Lord Tennyson, or was it John Keats, who once wrote: “it is better to have loved and failed, than never to hav loved at all.”
Loving with caution is quite a very selfish/ self-centered affection and for mer personally, it is holding back because of the instinct of self-preservation. It is still the self that matters above all.
Guess that is the reason why Jesus tells us two things about love. First, He spoke to His disciples with loving Him as requiring denial of the self (no caution needed), carrying of one’s cross daily (no reserves) and following Him. Second, He also spoke of loving Him in such a way that all other “loves” of our lives become hatred by comparison.
To which, all of us will say, “OUCH! That hurts!”
Love with caution? NO, Love with reckless abandon!
Ed Ma. A.
Crazy thing called Love. L-O-V-E
Funny, but the last time i checked 1 John, i found that LOVE is a person, not a thing, not a feeling, not a concept. GOD. GOD is Love, and whoever loves is in God and God is in Him. LOVE is a Being, the Divine Lover, the relentlessly pursuing Hunter and Husband. Wonder how a guy like me would like one day as I become His Beloved Bride, as part of His Church.
And, oh, another thing. Somewher tucked in my Sunday School notes as a child was the passage: “There is no fear in love but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.”
That being so, I cannot hide in fear and still be in love. Roman Christopher is right about loving with reckless abandon.
So, love with caution is not simply rancid or distasteful or leaves an awfully bad taste in the mouth (like a cough syrup that tastes awful but works!). It simply is not permissible from the Divine perspective. I cannot love and fear at the same time. And i suppose JESUS, the second person of the Trinity (ergo, is HImself LOVE), did not fear but His love drove out fear. Probably why out of His Person (i.e., out of His being Love), He cried out on the Cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Maybe my whole perspective is wrong. It is ultimately not about me. It is about God. Because God is Love.
I proceed with caution. I fear. I am hurt. I am excited. It is the “I” paradigm.
What about: “God” proceeds with caution in loving me. God fears as He loves me. God is taking it slowly in loving me. God does not want to go broke because He does not want to be hurt, disappointed, broken, angry. God does not want to be called a masochist.
It just does not sound right. Especially when I read about a bald-headed guy on the way to his decapitation, after having been beaten, stoned, imprisoned, spat, left for dead, lashed, put in shackles, bore in his body the death of His beloved master and Lord. This scholar and zealot for his faith said one time, while being chained to crack soldiers, “for to me to live is Christ” because “he loved me and gave Himself for me”.
This hero of mine wrote, “(God) who did not spare His own Son but gave Himself for us all, how will He not also, along with Him graciously give us all things?”
I love that kind of LOVE. I love that kind of GOD.
And for the life of me and all it’s worth, assuming that it is not at all about me, may i not proceed with caution in loving Him back and in loving the very people who hurt me, wound me, shot me when I am wounded and pour salt on my wound.
Far be it from me that I sin against the Lord that i do not love Him and His creation hook, line and sinker, lock, stock and barrel. All of me for all of Him.
By Him and in Him.
UBIQUE. SEMPER. AB OMNIBUS. NECESSITAS CARITATIS.