The Contemplative Cottage

“I dream of a Love that even Time will lie down and be still for.”

When I was in my 20s, I used to say, if I marry, I won’t marry until I’m 30.  I could count on a few fingers men who had touched my heart–men who also only saw me as sister and friend.

Love–the covenant, life-long-promise kind of love–remained a distant hope.

“There is plenty of time,” friends and family would say, during seasons when I’d flail and founder, and demand a reason for my singleness.

Now I am 40, and can look back at two decades of dating experiences (less than one hand could count) and a brief engagement–infrequent, glorious and often painful forays into the realm of love and heart.  The Lord took me on a journey this past year after I caught another glimpse of this longed-for- Love, and promptly reached out with both hands and held on like one drowning, squeezing out its life.

I have felt a lot like Elijah impatiently pleading with God at the mouth of the cave.

Patiently and gently, the still small voice responded, “So you want to be married? Good, let’s take a realistic look at what you call love and what you would bring to a future marriage.” Through the verses of the old standard, Proverbs 31, God asked the tough questions: Do you have your house in some sense of order? Do you have an understanding of how you deal with stress and discouragement? Are you following My call on your heart and willing to make it a priority? What are your habits, good and bad? Are you able to nurture a relationship? Are you financially and emotionally stable?

I reeled and was silent in the face of such Love. Love that sought my best, not just for me, but for all whom I am in relationship with. Love that wasn’t interested in coddling me or worried about my reaction.  Love that would speak its peace and then still be there in the morning.  The kind of Love I longed for, but didn’t know the first thing about how to give or receive.

And then God had a heart-to-heart with me about the difference between love and longing.

Longing is that deep heart-desire for a kindred spirit, a person who knows me intimately, a person who loves me even when I’m not likable; the desire for comfort after a hard day, for a hand to hold in fear; for the kiss that curls the toes.

But the focus of longing is on me and what I desire.

Love was not in my relational earthquakes or the wind or the fire, the tumult or anxiety, the intensity or the tears.  Longing, yes, but not Love, a Love that simply loves, without demanding payment.

Now, the desire to be loved is good and wonderful, and this desire has a place in relationships, but actions rooted in this longing are not the same as love.  Love places the beloved at the center–not a desired response, not the fulfillment of my longing to be loved.

Am I giving love or longing? Am I seeking to do and give what is loving for the other person, or only what will garner a fulfillment of my longing?

It is a question that is changing how I approach all relationships.

But what do I do with the longing?

I write this only as one in the midst of asking the question.  I believe God is the only One who can bear and fulfill the full intensity of our longings–no person can be our fulfillment.  Deep friendships , family, and covenant relationships have space for the mutual sharing and fulfilling of longing—for love, intimacy, encouragement, delight.  However, I am persuaded that even then, the call is to love those in our lives first, and our longing’s fulfillment comes only as a grace-full gift.

I am practicing giving God my longings and giving others love.

“Words don’t mean anything.”

I found myself saying that a lot in 2009.  Words I read.  Words I wrote.  Empty.

It’s not surprising that I started mixing up my letters, using wrong words, and consistently neglected endings.

There were too many words to keep track of, to remember, to reach out and try to capture, kicking and screaming, from thought to paper, sometimes jumbled, sometimes ridiculous, rarely loved enough to reveal their beauty.

The last few years, I drank from the fire hose of academic theology (and drowned)…books and ideas coming so fast, I lost the larger text of my life in a cascade of others’ ideas and opinions. I lost my words.

And the books which once gave me so much comfort lost their life, “just words on a page.” Not flesh and blood. Incarnation stripped away and the meaning with it.

Too, so much of life became virtual words, 140 character snippets of breath-taking moments, so easily sent into the ether, so easily erased and forgotten.  What about the heart and love they expressed?

(I love hand-written letters, taken out and read tenderly over the years, testimony to a life lived, honored by safe-keeping, ribbon-bound, in a special chest.)

Losing my words, especially my prayer words, woke me up.  Now, drinking from the Word is reconnecting life and heart, text and meaning.  I see that what I lost was not simply a string of letters and punctuation, but Someone to talk to, Someone I trusted to welcome my heart and reply with His own.

“In the beginning was the Word…” John 1:1

God with us. Love spoken into the world with flesh and letters,  bound with ribbons of an Always-Presence everywhere I look.  Word-who-took-on-skin, this Love, can hear and respond, can still speak today through frail earthly language.

Human words may crack under the weight of meaning.

But You do not.

Lord, may the words I speak and write be rooted and planted in Love.