Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Giving Love vs Taking Love

And again, you have heard me, and answered.

Thank you, God, for watching out for my family.

A moment of truth: that I want to die for them, everyone. Does that make sense? That in the deepest core of my heart is this eager yearning to sacrifice, to place myself upon an altar. God, I want to give all of myself to you, to them. In some ways, I suppose I already have -- it was an even trade, was it not? My heart for Yours?

I am in love now, I suppose, with a man. We are together; he is a blessing, and people are not made to be alone. But even love distracts from this burning desire in my heart. It is not something that I could ever share, nor have I ever shared, with anyone else. It is my deepest secret, this yearning desire to sacrifice my life for the world. I've never been in this place before, where a relationship is a cold ember compared to the love between me and God. I do not need anyone, though I am happy to share my day with someone else. I am happier now, I feel the ability to move forward, even if I am a different person than I was before. I am still familiarizing myself with all of the changes, all of the ways I have grown, and the spikes and slivers where I am still the same. I am more of myself. I am a new self? I am no one.

With God, I am whole. I am empty, and I am whole. It becomes a duality, it blurs, it is one thing, wholeness and emptiness, like a cup full of light, weightless, filled to the brim. And in love now with a man, I can see the difference, I can recognize God's love as a giving love, a selfless love, unconditional. When we fall in love, infatuation, it is a taking love, a judging love, an evaluating, selfish thing. Love evolves, but this is how we begin, not knowing the difference between taking love and giving love. I see the challenge of marriage: to transform the selfish to the selfless; to understand ourselves and both separate and entwined. It is the journey of the heart; the evolution of the soul. God, you are brilliant. Through our need for one another, we come to know You, even if we do not realize Your work.