There’s this stop-watch in my living room that beeps once every hour. It's not a loud beep and when I'm busy I often don't even hear it, but in the moments that I lay in my bed drifting into sleep, this soft beep has the power to startle me awake.
This is the only way I know how to explain my recent thought process about love.
The past few months I have been trying to understand God's peace. Like many people, it is easy for me to become anxious about life situations. It is not unheard of for me to have trouble sleeping because I cannot shut off my mind. Nevertheless, the last couple of months I have found a really wonderful place of peace. I have been able to flush my mind of all the clutter. Sure there have been the occasional anxious moments, but I am able to keep them to a minimum and calm down relatively quickly.
Love is the one thing that I have not been able to flush out of my mind, however. Although I do not often think directly about it, I am surrounded by it. Like the stop-watch in my living room, the thought of love often drifts through my brain unnoticed only to startle me awake hours later.
Love is my favorite thing to think about and yet the most frightening. Love is demanding, and self-disciplined, it requires commitment, responsibility, and most frightening of all--vulnerability. I desire this perplexing notion with everything in me, and yet I find myself running the other direction when it comes near. Michel Quoist may have expressed this idea best in his prayer "Life is before me, Lord...But you are with me on the journey."
“I am afraid of this love
which I desire with all my being,
at the dawn of my days
and in the depth of my nights.
Mysterious energy that inundates my heart
and overflows my body,
and with lengthening days importunate longing
to encounter a face,
to recognize and be recognized
as the one uniquely sought."
(Michel Quoist, New Prayers)
Love is an emotion that is distinctively human. Although as a race we continue to evolve into higher levels of thinking and greater technology, we are stuck with ineffective and harmful paradigms about love. Like oxen lined up to be slaughtered, we continue to mindlessly pursue love in unhealthy ways, yet run from its binding commitments like frightened children. I am both the ox and the frightened child.
And so, because I suffer from both the desire and the fear of love, I will write. Maybe this will stop the persistent beeping in my head…
This post begins a series of posts about love. Let me encourage those that have gone before me in the areas of wisdom and/or experience to hold me accountable; challenge me. I will write what I know on this topic knowing full well that I do not know much.
I hope that we can enjoy this journey together.
