Love

So I haven't blogged in months...a lot has been going on. Or maybe I just have not had the emotion that tonight is producing in a while. I've been rather numb, but tonight I feel compelled to write, even though I should be studying for finals...words just have to get out.

Tonight a deep, introspective cloud is hovering over me. I feel the need to think deeply. I feel a nagging longing for love. When I was a little girl I had so many visions of what love was supposed to look like, from the love Cinderella had for her prince to the love Dorthy had for the counterparts on her journey to Oz, I had a vision of what love was "supposed" to look like. Big. Unmistakable. Without blemish. Perfect. Pervading. Eternal.

Not simply romantic love either. We long for a kinship with a kindred spirit, someone who "gets" you, someone you can rely on. Whatever the type of love, as you age, as you gain experience, you realize that love (like so many things) doesn't look exactly like what you thought it would.

I remember the first time I thought I was "in love." Infatuated, blissfully ignorant, unable to accept logic or reason. For a few days, even months these emotions seem like enough to sustain your emotion...but one day you want more. I was so blinded by hormones that it took a very long time to realize the damage I allowed this person to make to my esteem, my soul, and my heart, simply because I thought I honestly was "in love." So many heartbreaks could have been avoided if only I would have evaluated my obsession. Could I talk to this person? No. Did he treat me with respect? No. Did my family and those closest to me approve? No. Did he challenge me to be a better human being?Definitely not. Yet why are we so willing to overlook red flag after red flag to simply follow an emotion, or the dream of an emotion?

Emotions, newness wears off. Authenticity and truth remain. There is a reason that the deepest longing of the human heart is that of love. A reason that God charges "love" the greatest among those three truths that remain. To love is to hope, to have faith in the unseen. To love is to give up the momentary in hopes of a better tomorrow. Perhaps this is why, after heartbreak and breakups, we still deeply long to love.

I will be twenty-five soon, and yes I feel a little old. The majority of my friends are married with children, have stable incomes, and mortgages, and SUVs. Isn't there supposed to be something in me that should be jealous of that which I am "without"? Living with my parents, going to school yet again, chasing something I don't fully understand? But I cannot help but thank my lucky stars daily I have not settled for a second-rate version of my "modified dream."

Yes, I want different things now. I want stability, I want commitment, fidelity, common faith. When I was younger I wanted someone who could play the guitar and looked like Paul McCartney. But the feeling is the same, the hope is the same, the dream is the same. C.S. Lewis once said:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

To choose love is to choose life. And maybe I haven't found what I'm looking for yet because before I didn't know what I really wanted. That's the funny thing about hearts, they tell you the truth five years later. Nevertheless I am still hopeful, and I am now, more than ever...delirious with possibility.