The Poem Part 2: Love Finds Us

So, haven't put anything up in ages (I guess two years now). Trying to post up some wedding photos & that includes putting up a copy of my part 2 of 'the poem'. A few posts down in the 'advent contribution' there is the original poem 'we ache for love' that was my expression of working through singleness at age 37. Well, that caught the attention of a beautiful & amazing woman &, long story short, that led to me getting married to the lovely & amazing, Darlene Kun Holloway on July 21 of 2012. As part of the celebration, I wanted to kind of put together a 'part 2' to the original poem to show this was the next step in the story. So what came out of it & wove into our wedding was the theme of 'Love Finds Us'. It includes launching from the ache for love in the original poem & going through the words of 1 Corinthians 13 (the love chapter in the Bible) & finding that it's maybe both declaration of what love is and also a journey of how love finds us, pursues us, disarms us & eventually saves us from ourselves...

Anyhow, here the part 2: Love Finds Us:

We ache for love.

From the darkness and sea of our mother’s womb, to the dark & cold that we are planted in like a seed waiting for spring, we ache to be loved and to love. From cradle to the grave, across culture, gender and age, we groan under this ache. Our ache fuels the never ending quest to find love, to win and to woo, not for the sake of the beloved, but to keep the emptiness at bay; as our ancestors lit their fires to keep the beasts just beyond the flickering circle of light.

We ache for love.

We fear the admission of our ache. We live with the nagging dread that we are the only ones who fail in finding love. We fear that the confession of need for love will further disqualify us and drive love away. And so our lonely search for love, marked by fear and shame, is disguised to mask what we truly seek. We search for success and excellence, anything that will win acceptance or respect. We search for beauty and contort our bodies to fit the latest fad and fashion. We live indulgent lifestyles and buy flashy expensive things we don’t need. We live in constant rivalry with each other, hoping for something that makes us stand out in the mating dance competition. We hope that if we are good enough, pretty enough, or live an extravagant enough life, that somehow, someone will notice us & want to love us.

We ache for love.

And when our masquerade search for love fails, as it always seems to, we throw ourselves into desperate attempts to numb the ache for love. We sell our souls to relationships that are empty, parasitic, co-dependant, abusive. We tell ourselves the lies of ‘good enough for now’ or ‘this is what I deserve’ or ‘this is the best there is’. All the while denying the dreams and longings of what we really ache for. The cost of our fruitless search devastates and devalues us. In the end, we try to cauterize our hearts; try to stop feeling all together so we can escape the pain of hoping for a love that we cannot find.

We ache for love.

The competition to win love distorts our image of love. Our knowledge of love is morphed through good intentions, through Hollywood love stories, through disappointment and broken relationships. We forget that…

Love is….

Love is patient: Love is eternal and waits for us to reach the end of our search. Love camps outside the walls of our hearts and slides the key through the bars, daring us to unlock the door & let Love in.

Love is kind: Love meets us in the tragedy of where our search for love has left us, and gently lifts us out of the gutter, bandages our wounds and carries us on our journey to home.

Love doesn’t envy: Love heals our shame. Love reminds us who we are instead of telling us what we’re not. Love shows us the treasure of how we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Love does not boast: Love banishes our fears and insecurities. Love calls us to lay aside our masks and rediscover our true beauty as once in eternity, priceless masterpieces.

Love isn’t proud: Love challenges us to let go of our lonely stubborn self-sufficiency and pleads with us to accept help from the hands of Love.

Love doesn’t dishonor others: Love calls us to end the comparison game and to see everyone, including ourselves, as someone worthy of Love.

Love is not self-seeking: Love sacrifices everything for us and dares us to surrender our futile attempts to earn love and to instead receive Love’s salvation.

Love is not easily angered: Love meets us at the end of our strength and counsels us to stop lashing out and receive the healing we need for our wounds of shame and fear.

Love keeps no record or wrongs: Love forgives us for the wrongs we’ve done; for all the destruction we’ve sown in our lives and the lives of others in our competition. Love pleads with us to forgive others and forgive ourselves.

Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth: Love banishes the memory of our failures & mistakes; and urges us to let go of the baggage that’s been weighing us down. Love rejoices with each step we take towards wholeness, honesty and vulnerability.

Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres: Love fights for us when we have no strength to fight. Love believes in us when we have given up on ourselves. Love hopes for us when we have lost hope. Love endures when we at are our end.

Love never fails: Love is so much more than what we think it is. Love is unstoppable, undefeatable. Love is a fire that cannot be quenched. Love does not originate with us; we are not its manufacturer. Love is. Love is our source and exists outside of us. Love is the one thing that we cannot provide for ourselves. Love is not under our control. It does not bow to our wishes, does not cater to our insecurities, does not bend to our demands. Love cannot be bought, or won; earned, hustled or blackmailed.

Love is a gift.

Love is a complete act of grace; unmerited favour, unearned kindness. Love must be received with open hands like a child on Christmas morning. Love must be invited in and given permission to make its home in our hearts. Love is not far off and out of reach. Love has been pursuing us relentlessly since before we were born. Love knows our names, the number of hairs on our head and every secret dream and ache. Love reveals itself in the unexpected moments and some times in the people who don’t fit our image, who mess up our systems & leave all our best moments feeling lack luster when not shared with them. And in the unexpected revelation of love, we find not what we thought we wanted, but what we truly need; a love that shapes us through a lifetime shared, for richer, for poorer, for better for worse, from now through eternity….

Love finds us. Love found us