I want to run. Run and run and run. I want to run back. I want to run through time. I want to run past the fights, past the love, past the regrets and mistakes. I want to leave the heartache and hell to the future, again. I want to run until I am sitting on a cement block under a tree in the rain, with a hill behind me and all that I could ever dream of before me.
I realize now, that when you have what you always dreamed of, it isn't a dream anymore.
When I was a little girl, I ran around the house pretending to ride a horse. I fed it and took care of it. I walked it around on an imaginary rope.
When I was older and had my real horse, I groaned when I had to roll out of bed early in the morning to feed him. I hated having to carry buckets of water from the cistern to his watering tank. Having my own horse wasn't so dreamy.
When I dreamed of love, of having someone to hold me and love me, I didn't realize relationships could be so hard and painful. When you can only dream of love, I don't think it is possible to know what love is, how it works. How it hurts like hell when it stops 'working'.
When I had that dream of love, it was wonderful. When I had love, it was wonderful as well, but it cost a lot.
When I had love, I understood it better. When I lost it, I understood it more.
Andrew loved me well. I loved Andrew as well, but I think I may have loved him differently then he loved me. When I love again, I want to love like Andrew loved me. He was more selfless. He gave up more for me than I gave up for him, in a sense. I am not sure if he should have conceded as often as he did. He made mistakes. But I have a feeling that his love was more of a service to me than mine was to him.
Love is a service. It is so much more than a feeling. It isn't something that works one day and doesn't the next. Love is a commitment to glorifying and making more of another person. Love is not about a person who makes you feel good about yourself. It is not about finding your best match. The purpose of love and marriage is to model the relationship that we have with Christ. Christ submitted himself in death. We, likewise, die to ourselves. It is not easy. I want to love a person in this way. But I know that my self will always get in the way sometimes. I have also realized that when we submit our human love to the divine love of Christ, it will be infinitely more easy to love like Christ loves. When we isolate ourselves from the love of Christ, how can we expect to love like He does? We cannot love adequately of ourselves.
Before I learn to love a man so radically, in a love that gives of myself to make him more of a man, I must learn to love Christ in such a way. I must learn to love Christ in a way that puts to death my own desires so that I may serve Him.
It is not easy. But by God's grace, we all can love like that. What would our world look like if we stopped loving ourselves by loving others? What if we started loving others by 'hating' ourselves?
I am just learning these things. I do not claim to understand the complexities of love and human relationships, of our relationship to the Divine. I know that I have loved, that I still love. I have been in a complex relationship. I am in a relationship with God. Yet, the deeper I get into God, the scarier it sometimes gets. The deeper I fall into my feelings for another person, the scarier it gets. And I am left running. Running back to when my life was simple. I didn't have to understand why God created some, just so that they might go to hell. I didn't have to understand what happens to an infant when they die. I didn't have to think too deeply about apostasy. Love was just something I felt for mom and dad, grandmas and grandpas. I loved Jesus. Just like I loved my horse. I didn't understand that it meant so much compromise, evaluation, and thought. That it was a choice I had to make everyday, something I had to struggle so much with. I had no idea it could be accompanied with so much deadly passion. Knowing these things makes it harder to proceed. Seeing the wild and more dangerous side of God causes me to proceed into Him further with caution. Seeing the promises and failures of love causes me to proceed into relationships with greater hesitancy.
Sometimes I just wish I could be the little girl with the white pony again. And without any other care in the world.
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