When I first read the book Love Is A Choice, I was twelve years into a heart sickness that I could not overcome. Year after year, new love interest after new love interest, yet I was still hung up on one man. I named him the one who got away.
Reading this book taught me about codependency, love hunger and empty love tanks. Codependency is when one person needs the other person to be unhealthy and oftentimes enable them to remain that way. An empty love tank was an emptiness of the soul that seeks to be filled. If you were raised in a household where love wasn't flowing freely, namely your parents or authority figures were not emotionally available, it created a hunger for what you didn't receive. A love hunger. Some filled that hunger with drugs, others with alcohol. Me? I fed it with romantic relationships.
Years of watching The Wonderful World of Disney and soap operas offered me relief from that insatiable hunger. All I needed to do was find The Handsome Prince. This man would rescue me from my longing and loneliness and finally cure me of the aching deep inside.
As I approach age 51, Life has offered me years of experiences, yet that fantasy of a true love has remained. After years of false starts, a date here and there, or a rebound with an unavailable person, here I stand. I am soooo grateful that God in His Infinite Wisdom didn't allow that to steal my capacity for a loving relationship. Nevertheless, I'll not make this blog post about that relationship; rather, I prefer to make this about an emerging knowing in its aftermath.
I've been pondering this very subject for the past few days during the Christmas holidays. You can't watch a Christmas movie on Fa La La La Lifetime, the Family Channel or Hallmark without seeing a romantic story unfolding: a man and woman who are brought together during the Yuletide season. Lives are touched by the spirit of Christmas and hearts choose Love over isolation. Ahhhhhh, romance, true love, Christmas magic. The source of great joy for the lovers but the source of great torment for those who are eating a pint of Haagan Daas and wiping away lonely tears.
Could it be that Love is much bigger, broader, and richer than the films we watch? Perhaps Love isn't an ideal that ebbs and flows with the beginning and ending of a romance. Perhaps Love is more spiritual than we've been taught to recognize. From birth until now, Love has taken many forms and assumed many postures. I just didn't recognize it. During the times of longing, I've dismissed Love because it didn't come in the form I wanted. Rather than be filled with gratitude for the love of family, the love of friends, the love of worshippers, the love of humanity, the love of beauty, I'd envy couples walking hand in hand or people exchanging wedding vows. So much of my life has been spent grieving one form all the while surrounded by Love.
Love exists. Whether we acknowledge it or not, Love is. And we have the choice to honor it, whatever the form, or to dismiss it. Have you ever had a friend whom you truly cared about dismiss you when a man or woman came into their lives? Nobody likes to feel like they are being loved by default. That meantime thinking that says, I'll love you or hang with you because I don't have anything better to do or....because I don't have a romantic interest. Lord, open my eyes so that I can recognize and appreciate your Love in whatever form You provide.
I truly hope that, though I am ever-learning, with age is coming increasing clarity. Love is Love. It's just as equally Love when it's between comrades as it is when it's between a man and a woman. Love is just as sacred, wonderful and of value. The love a parent feels when they hold their newborn child in their arms for the first time. The love of a soldier who throws himself on a grenade to save people he doesn't even know. Love is powerful. So powerful in fact that a heart can be inspired to keep beating against all odds because of Love. Love is.
I use to wonder how two people who experienced a romantic relationship could continue to keep company or be fixtures in each others' lives. As I get older, I believe that those who are healthy and open understand that Love is Love. So what if the romantic love ceases, they are open to Love's other forms. It's not moving backward but taking a new path as you move forward. For this reason, they don't throw the person away just because loving them requires an ending of one form and a beginning of another.
Love is only painful when we try to hold on, says an article I read in an old issue of O Magazine. When you won't let go, it exposes you to much inner suffering. There's got to be some truth in that.
With age comes the reality that my days on this earth are shortening. Unless I have purpose that will allow me to see 100 years old, most of my life has been lived. Because of this, I don't have the time to spend on folly. Everything isn't a dealbreaker, as it was in my youth. Hence, the illumination. Love doesn't go away, it just changes forms. There are some people who still have a place in your future. The key is letting go of the old and embracing the new. It's forgiving and releasing. It's understanding that Love is necessary.
An old flame sent me a text message the day before Christmas. My first thought was "he's still thinking about me." My Ego wanted to take it in a direction that was familiarly self-serving. But the part of me that is ever-growing into my best self responded with a spirit of gratitude. You see, real Love doesn't require anything else. It's open and willing but entertains no other agenda except expression. Understand, it is not ignorant or unwise; it is loyal only to itself. It is with this understanding that I pray--as I cross into another year--that the Love of God, who is the author of Love, find an expanded residence in me.
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