Real Love Persists

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"Real love cannot be so tenuous a thing that it takes many months to build and mere moments to destroy." -me

As we head deeper into the Holiday Season, when we think about loved ones, loved traditions, and things that we love to receive, the word love begs greater scrutiny. I've lost a lot of people I love this year, and really over the past few years, as the first blood relatives I actually knew died. When they died, I knew that they loved me, and I hope my cousins who felt otherwise will realize that they were loved eventually. Throughout my life, as it is supposed to be, my family has been a cistern of comfort and assurance from which I could draw in troubled times, fed by the continually flowing love of my parents for their children. I hope to have the kind of relationship with a partner that they enjoy and that their parents before them enjoyed, where their spouse was a source of reliable love and support as a bailiwick in troubled times. I don't see that as much as I like, and most people don't even seem to be looking for anything besides a mate, but the storybooks give us hope in things like real love. Finally, but not the least of which, the Christmas season is for Christians about God's love for man, His mercy, grace, and goodness in sending His son to rescue us.

Love of good parents sets the stage for success in life, love, and labor. Early last week, while shopping at the grocer, I observed a young child throw a tantrum because her mother forbade the purchase of some junk food, replete with the retort that claims the mother hated the daughter. As I surveyed the exchange, rather than criticize the young lady, I pondered my own reactions to my parents and apologized to my mother for my own similar outbursts and ignorance. I wasn't always sure how they manifest it, but I have always been certain as an adult that my parents loved me. When I was abroad, they wrote faithfully, even my father who wrote me a letter every week from Korea while stationed there alone. When I got divorced, they provided me berth under their roof once more. Each week when we are both in town, they invite me over for dinner and seem interested in my life. God blessed me with wonderful parents, and happy is the man whose parents actually wanted him. I know not everyone has this, and for that I weep.

No love on earth compares to or can replace that loving bond between parent and child. You spend nine months or so literally connected to your mother, and when your father is present in more ways than the physical, it creates a strong emotional bond. So, I understand when people I know follow the guidance of their parents and when parents I know reach out in desperate pleas to God on behalf of their prodigal children. At least one regular reader understands this, how no matter what they do or where they go you continue hoping for the wayward child and stand ready to slay the fatted calf when that child returns. The first Sunday in December, I opined to my mother that I might not ever find anyone fit to be a partner for life. She told me that she continued to hope that both my sister and I would find someone so that we'd at least not have to go through life alone. My parents pray regular for us, stand ready to assist us, and train us for later success in life. In fact, marriage is the greatest prophylactic against child poverty on earth. Good marriages help us learn how to forge good relationships with our peers leading to good romance. Good rearing prepares children to be successful, productive, and profitable members of society who are also self-reliant and eager to serve others.

Love that's romantic sets the stage for an enjoyable life and for our true legacy. They say that we do not find the purpose and meaning of life alone but with someone else, someone special, a partner in and for life. They don't tell you that it's harder to find that than we like or that most people aren't looking for anything long term. All too often, we trade what we want most for what we want at the moment and spend our lives doing neither what we ought nor like. How many couples end their marriages when the kids move out because they don't really like each other or have anything in common? In 2005, when a friend of mine decided to date a guy that I considered wrong and then realized I was right, she asked me if the first guy would still care about her. I reminded her of the Journey song "Separate Ways". I've used it as an intro to all of my youtube videos since then as a reminder of this belief.

Although eros is the lowest love, when coupled with the higher loves, it's a virtue and lofty goal. When you truly love someone, it means never giving up on people that you love and allowing them to choose their own adventure. This is how I know I didn't really love my ex wife but how I know I love someone else. At first, I loved my ex as well as I understood, because I tried for a significant time interval to rescue our marriage. However, I know now that I did it because I loved God. When I was told the church would no longer force us to stay together after about a year of trying to salvage it, I felt relieved, because I really didn't like her as much as I thought. This is how those stories you hear on Delilah get started, where people get together decades later, because they really loved them and never gave up hope. This is also how you hear about people who let the people they love go even though they really liked them, because they know that if it's right now it will also be right in a year, a decade, and a lifetime. If someone is really good for you, they will return. I know it's hard to trust in and wait for that because nobody has ever returned in my life, and I only know one person I care to have return. I do know that truelove is forever, that truelove will still be there, though you touch and go your separate ways. I realized this year that many of the couples I see that I don't understand exist because of true love. In many cases, these people married their best friend; in most of them they still see the person they love even if and when their mortal coil begins to decay. I only loved one woman in my whole life who loved me for me; she loved me and my stubborn belly fat. I think that if she had chosen me we could rely on each other for constant support and comfort in troubled times. Said Prince Humperdink: "You truly love each other, and so you might have been truly happy."

Love of God anchors our principles, holds our hope on a steady course, and comforts us in times of trial and hardship. Far too many of the people who change their principles either do not actually love God or do not really believe that He loves them. When you are fixed on yourself as the highest authority, it's easy to bend the rules to make yourself virtuous. It's easy to understand why people find it hard to believe in God, because they have very little concrete experience with Him. They can't touch Him, call Him, read letters from Him to them, etc., but even if they had this, it wouldn't help. I have all those things from people I know, and sometimes it's still not enough to be sure of their intentions and affirmations. When I got divorced, and I felt very low about the decision and its ramifications on my life, a kindly bishop sat me down and told me "You'll only really understand God's love for you when you hold your own son in your arms". I may never really understand this consequently, but during the Christmas season when I think about Christ's birth I feel like there is something, a point, a purpose, a plan, and a Parent, my Father God who loves me. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whoso believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Christ was sent because God still loves us in spite of all that we have done.

Fortunately for us, God continues to love us. We continue to be exceedingly blessed in America, despite existential threats from abroad, financial duress everywhere, and pandemics in other continents. The story is told of a man who asked another who claimed God didn't meddle in human affairs anymore if we no longer need God, only to the reply that we need Him more than ever. I read this morning about how the Pope claims that salvation is free. Well, that's true, in a way. Francis says this because there are many people who think it's simply a matter of saying a sufficient number of Hail Mary's or paying a fee to the church to be forgiven. Well, by that logic, even Ghengis Khan, Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, Julius Ceasar, and Jack the Ripper can and will be forgiven. I find it curious as well as infuriating that so many people around me seem so convinced of their state of grace as they persist in perniciousness while I sit there as the Publican of the New Testament and ask God for mercy. I am acutely aware of and intimately familiar with my weaknesses, and I know who and what I am. Despite my mistakes, I enjoy many blessings. I have my health, the use of my limbs, command of my faculties, food in my pantry, money in the bank, a car in the driveway, a roof over my head, a few friends, a fantastic family, and the hope that maybe one day it will be His good will to send me a wonderful woman to be my partner for my lives. I know so many people who live paycheck to paycheck or who suffer from privations and disease and who struggle to find employment. I am truly blessed. His love persists.

It is not love that is the problem but what people understand as love that's the problem. True love is forever. True love persists. It's why good parents pray and look for the lost. It's why people continue to pray and look for someone to love them for who they really are. It's why we find comfort in God who already loves us for who we really are despite the stupid and sometimes rebellious things we do. I have great hope that God will grant me the chance to partner with a wonderful daughter of God and become a good parent so that I can raise up my seed to serve and honour the God who richly blesses us. I think I understand Samuel's mom now and Mary the mother of Christ who both gave up their sons to the service of God, first at the tabernacle, and the latter in Gethsemane. But if not, I know it's not because God doesn't love me. He does. Thank you, Lord, for this blessing, for I know thou lovest me and that thou wouldst not allow this to happen if not for my eternal best good. In God I still trust.