Learning to Love

I was thinking about love the other day. I never knew it was possible to feel so full of love. I think real love was something that was missing from my life back home.Not that I didn't love, I just didn't love then like I love now. Love that's a giving, a taking, a deep seated feeling. I was thinking about the love I have for the sisters here. Things aren't always good. It's been a rough time in St. Petersburg lately. Yet, things were talked about, discussed, dealt with and I find myself coming out of a distressing situation full of peace and love. Peace, love and contentment. We all make mistakes, we all fall, and there's this point where you have to recognize that everyone is human. We're not perfect. Sure, a situation might cause anger, pain and hurt and those are valid feelings. But if you work through them, on the other side you'll find a deep sense of calm.

I feel full of love in these days. The power and beauty of it makes me want to weep. The problem with the English language is that we only have one word to describe love, and that one word isn't a very good description in the first place because of the way our culture defines it. For our culture, love is a feeling. It's butterflies, roses and unicorns. It's flowers, chocolate and kissing in the rain. It's sex and orgasm. In our culture, love is a fickle thing. A feeling we become addicted to and then when it's gone we feel empty, lonely, broken and try to pursue it elsewhere.

But that's not true love. True love isn't just about a man and a woman. True love is still a feeling, but it's a feeling of calm, of security. It's loving people in spite of their faults. True love is a glue that binds people together. True love is not the same as compassion, though they are connected in a way. True love grows, multiplies and flourishes. It makes better whatever it touches. True love is warmth and light and shared experience. It's wanting what's best for those around you, though it isn't something that makes you feel put down and used. If you have true love it will make you better; make you want to reach out and share what you have with others. They always say that the more love you give the more you have, which is true in a sense. Love is not a selfish thing, it's meant to be shared. Yet I like to think of it a little differently. I've discovered that the more love you give, the deeper and more profound your own becomes. Perhaps bigger is a good word to describe it.

I think of it as an underground spring, bubbling from down deep and coming up to spread out and create a lake. That's how it feels inside of me. And you just want everyone to come and jump in and experience the same thing. To have their own spring of love inside of them. 

True love connects people. 

True love is Joy. 

True love is a Son sent to die for all of us.