Love

I remember the day God told me that I didn’t love my husband. We had been married two or three years and, if you’d asked me or him or anyone around us, I’m pretty sure the consensus would be that I didn’t just love Jermaine but I was head over heels IN love with him.

Certainly, nothing had happened – no argument, no tense atmosphere, nothing. We were good. There was that quiet easy silence we’d fall into hovering in the car that afternoon as we waited at the light at Overland and Culver Blvds. Just a few feet more and we’d be at the church readying the white wine and hors d’oeurves for our regular Friday night service as per usual. 

The charge was quite conversational. It came with no rancor or accusation; just a quiet statement – “You don’t love him like you think you do”– as I gazed out of the passenger window.

My response was just as swift and just as silent. “Yes, I do. I’m in love with him.”

“No…you don’t,”He continued. “You love the way it makes you feel about yourself when you think of how much you love him and that’s not the same thing.” 

Mic. Drop.

What do you even SAY to something like that? I’ll tell you… Nothing! I had no response to that. But the wheels were already turning and the examination of the deepest motivations of my heart had begun. How could loving someone – nay being IN LOVE with someone – work out to be something that was actually only benefitting me? What kind of kung fu WAS this?!

“As I got closer to the seed, the name written across it became clearer...”

The more I dug to understand, the more elusive and small the origin of this all seemed. And then I saw it – tiny like a seed. The root issue seemed to be centered in the place within myself that this “love” was coming from. As I got closer to the seed, the name written across it became clearer: V A N I T Y. 

OUCH!!!

As soon as I saw it, I wanted to run. 

“If he stopped making you feel the way you feel about yourself then you wouldn’t love him,” God continued. And then all the air left the car. It seemed like an eternity had passed but we hadn’t moved an inch from the intersection. The clarity and truth of that statement had rendered the entire scene a silent, still tableau wherein nothing seemed to move or even flutter. 

Fast forward to present day, and I have friends all around me who want to love and be loved. As I watch one disconnect after another and pay witness to yet another disappointment ending in confusion with a ‘who-gives-a-f***’ patch-up job, the one element I see over and over again is that none of them – despite their protests to the contrary – truly loved the person they thought they were in love with. Not according to the undefeatable criteria that God, who is Love, laid down for me back in that car circa 2008. 

Love is not primarily reflective. It is first emanative. Real love begins and possibly ends without the expectation of reciprocation, notice or even care. It is altruistic. It is unselfish. It benefits others with the exclusive caveat that the giver may realistically not be benefitted from the exchange at all. If those things are needed or demanded for love to exist, then it is not love.  

So yeah… I had been doing it all wrong all of my life and no one had ever told me otherwise. It wasn’t until the post-challenge course correction and the following five years of growing in marriage – allowing the false altars of “love” in my heart to be demolished and overrun by the floodwaters of true love – that I qualified to enjoy the fruits that favor those so brave. 

I’d had to start learning to love Jermaine whether he responded the way I wanted him to all the time or not, whether he paid as much attention to me as I expected, whether it benefitted me a little, some or not at all. And he’d had to learn to do the same with me. Because that is what true love is. It inherently means that you may not get it back and that has to still be ok. It is called unconditional and that’s the only kind that is allowed to be classified as Love.  

“I spent the next six months nearly driving myself crazy with a single gnawing, aggressive, relentless question...”

After he passed away, I spent the next six months nearly driving myself crazy with a single gnawing, aggressive, relentless question that framed itself as an equation. An equation that spun around and around in my brain 24 hours a day/7 days a week. An equation that always, every time, ended with one conclusion that was so simple that I continually threw it out as too simple and, therefore, “wrong” and started the process all over again. I asked my spiritual father the question after I had exhausted myself yet another day: 

“Nate, what’s the point of all this?”

“What do you mean?” he asked me.

“ALL OF IT!! What’s the point of all of it?? Why do we bother living this life? I mean, what’s the f***ing point?!? Because I just don’t get it. You live, you die, you have kids or you don’t, relationships, friendships, work…life! What’s the POINT of it all??”  

Nate leaned back in his chair and put his hand on his hip the way he did just before pure wisdom was about to flow through him.

“Well…” he said, “I’d say it’s all so that we can learn to love.” 

And there it was. 

The one, simple answer that I had thrown out 800 million times over six months for its excessive simplicity. It had to be wrong. It was too simple. But it wasn’t. It was THE ANSWER. So, since we’re here for answers, let’s start at the beginning:

LESSON #1

If “love” is not coming from where Love comes from, then it’s not love. It’s something else.

Something to think about…