Love: What's It To You?

In these latter days, when fundamentalist fever fuels political agendas, there's a lot of argument over the meaning of the word "love". You love your dog, you love creme brulee, you love walking in the rain, you love Yakima's Mandarin Hefeweizen. You love but aren't IN love, love passionately, love platonically, physically but not emotionally. I use it everyday. In fact I have it for the shoes I'm wearing right now. But using it so casually cheapens the sentiment when I say it to my parents as they help me out with car insurance again or to my sister when she loans me half her wardrobe just because I asked. So I gotta wonder - what does it really mean to me?

My "Love" is old-fashioned and out-dated, so they say. Its foundation was formed long before anyone could ever try to define it. It's dismissed as absurd and ridiculous, then mocked for outrageous claims. It's too "exclusive" they say and impossible to accurately follow. What I believe Love to be is "too simple" and yet somehow too vast to even attempt to comprehend. It's been called fluff, prejudiced, judgmental, hypocritical, malicious, improbable and stupid.

Real Love, however, can only be understood - truly grasped and absorbed - when It's consumed you; when you've give up and given in to It. When I hear the word "Love" I think of crawling on bloodied hands and knees, tears streaking down my cheeks and a heart broken from disappointment, confusion, guilt, fear and shame. I remember bones weary from carrying the weight of my world, trying to be something and failing over and over again. When I think of Love, I'm thinking about where I've been, where I am and where I still have yet to go.

Love isn't an emotion felt when the climate is perfect. I'm not interested in a feeling that's at the mercy of what I do or what someone else does for me. Love isn't dependent upon external circumstances. When I talk about Love I know It isn't waiting on me to do or say something right.

"We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him."

Love is a cross on a hill. Love is blood and sweat mingled on a forehead. Love is 39 lashes. Love is a spear in the side. Love is an unfair trial. Love carried the crossbeam, took nails through hands and feet, was mocked, spat upon and humiliated. It's not pretty, It's not easy, It's not simple and It isn't for the queasy or faint of heart. Love hurts and requires you to step up and live it no matter what. Love asks for personal sacrifice, almost certain failure, overwhelming risk, blind faith, and incredible, superhuman strength. Love will devour every ounce of life in you and demand more. It's unrelenting, never-ending and incessant. In a booming voice, Love commands you to relinquish everything you have.

But in the end It prevails. Love rose above the cross, above disrespect, hate, ignorant fear and selfish desires. Love took hate, Roman torture, humanity's iniquities and a crucifixion and 2000 years later It still stands strong. Love did not ask your permission to die for your sins. It did it anyway.

Love, to me, is so much more than pretty words and phrases. Love is overwhelming, soul-stealing, breath-taking, freeing.

Do you have what it takes to truly understand Love? To live It out in your own life? Because whether you want to admit it or face it, Love is waiting for you. And Love doesn't care where you are, where you've been or what you're doing. It doesn't care how many drinks you've had, what substances are pumping through your veins or whose bed you crawled out of last night. Love doesn't see your complexion or your weight or how many friends you have on myspace. Love wants you 90 pounds overweight, out on a street corner, stealing money from your mom, face-down drunk, lonely, popular and suicidal. Love just wants you.

I guess the question is, do you want Love?