I am feeling so much love at many different levels these days. Love is powerful, this we know from the scriptures in the Bible that I read regularly. Love is a motivator. Love is respect. Love is caring. Love is kindness and tenderness and filled with hope. Love is patient. Love is fulfilling. Where are we without it and what does LOVE have to do with it, with anything?
A whole book could be written of love. I think of my personal journey of love, as a mother, wife, sister, daughter, friend, aunt...as a human being. I have discovered that is why we are put on this earth, and while our love can be tested, it is what motivates, guides, directs, gives us purpose. It removes us from ourselves. It is God's greatest gift to us, as His children. I can forget I am, after all, His child, because the pressures of adulthood and a world that is ever changing can get to me, the pain is so intense that I wonder how I am to endure, the sadness, the heartache, the suffering. I am numb and weak and broken, at times, but the love of a kind and tender God above brings me right back to where I am supposed to be....
I know that love often makes itself visible in pain. I am witnessing that again, firsthand, in my immediate family as my brother in law fights the cancer battle. Doctors may have believed he was in final stages of life in the physical sense, but he is showing strength, fortitude, the will to fight and live. I believe that is the power of love, and love has everything to do with it. He has found a loving God himself, who He believes in, who he knows sent His only son to die for us. What could be more satisfying than that, knowing that all the days of your life you have the true gift that has been there for the asking? He has also found the loving hands of a faithful wife, sons, and family, who give him every reason to cling to this life. With very little, if any, independence in recent days, there he is, gaining strength and proving a desire to live in love. With very little hope of another week or month or summer, he is still with us and here to live the day. That is LOVE and that is God and that is the family and friends God sends in the form of angels.
We can take the obvious and unobtrusive love for granted. We often do. It happens. Then life intervenes and we realize, almost too late, what exactly LOVE has to do with it. It has everything to do with it. It brings us to a place where we are truly blessed, whether we know it or not. It comes in the form of what others can do or say, or even NOT do or say. It comes in the quiet listener of a good and dear friend. It comes in the tender way in which we care for our loved ones. It comes in the form of a card or a meal, or a gift or a sign. It surrounds us and touches us in ways we may never have known, had we not been open to it all. And for some, it comes too late. The regrets set in, the "what ifs" and the "what fors", and we want the time back. Only we cannot get it. We don't know, until tragedy or loss invades, just what we had. We always think there is a tomorrow. And there is not. We only have right now. And right now is filled with love!
LOVE holds so much power and depth. My heart is over joyed with it at times, mostly, because I had the chance to love with all my heart, and still do. Just because there is loss, my mother, my father, my daughter, doesn't mean the love stops. If nothing else, it grows and grows and forms anew in my beating heart. My loved ones who passed on knew I loved, from the way we interacted, respected, cared, and behaved. It's not the words that are said, it's the beating of the heart from one person to another.
I know, now, that I can never ever take for granted that I will see my loved ones again when we part. There is no promise that there is another day to say or do what LOVE guides me to do. I suppose that is why I find it important to act upon my heart's intentions every day of my life, follow the spirit that is guided by God above, not question or ponder too long, wonder what others will think. I always say if I follow my heart I just cannot go wrong and I pray my intentions are pleasing to God, for that is all that matters, really.
I don't want to love in retrospect. I want to live and love and be present. I ask God's assistance in helping me seize the day, and I know that as long as I accept His unending love, I can love, and be loved. I can live knowing LOVE has everything to do with everything.
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