Teach Me About Love

I am participating in an online initiative and 30 day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.

“Books are the best of things, well used. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

As a writer, your only duty is to be original, to inspire, to put something new on paper. Don’t be reasonable – your job is to to fire up people’s imaginations, to give them permission to dream, and to lift their heads up to the incredible sight of the stars. They may forget what you wrote about – but they won’t forget how you made them feel.
It’s your turn now. Dream, be unreasonable and write what comes to you for 15 minutes.

****

Life is sacred. But how does one live a sacred life? Every day, I keep reminding myself to live in the present, to “be here now,” to not worry about the future and what it may or may not hold. There is so much that I want, but if I dwell on what I do not have yet, or that which is hard to come by, I miss out on all the moments happening underneath my nose.

This is a challenge for me. Be content right now, accepting myself as who I am in this moment. It is a challenge to be happy when the guy I want to know better seems to be out of my reach. It is a challenge to be peaceful when I am not confident in my own words, thoughts, and actions, when I am fearful of taking risks. Because what would happen if I actually got what I wanted? What if I didn’t want it anymore? What if I hurt people? Disappoint them? But the other question begs, “What if you don’t?”

And so here I am, plunging into the great unknown, trusting that the One who made me will lead me through troubled waters onto steady ground. I have several risks I am about to take, but I do not want to say too much because the time has not come to make them real. But I cannot ignore my heart’s leading, the intuition that prods me in one direction or the other. I’ve ignored it before, many times, and my own ignorance caused me great heartache, unnecessary misery.

Nearly two months ago, I asked God to teach me about love. Because I am more clueless than anyone. I felt as if God laughed and said, “Finally! It’s about time!”

It struck me as funny that I have never thought that precise thought before—I have never asked God to teach me about love, somehow as if God and love are separate things. But when I said this thought, I felt God laugh, and my eyes stung with tears. There was a deep pang in my chest as I wondered at the enormity, yet simplicity of such a request.

Now here I am, two months later, and I am simply amazed, humbled, and gratified at all the things God has been teaching me. He has been easing me into it, but the message is clear…He is not merely going to “teach” me about love. He is going to fill my life with it so that I experience it in all its glory, in all its many forms. Just wait, He says. There is much more to come.

Perhaps the hardest thing He has called me to do, aside from accepting such boundless love, is to give it away with my arms stretched wide and all the generosity I can muster.

It requires, in every moment, a shifting of my thoughts from the darkness of my past, to the heights and glory of His all-consuming purpose.