It Isn't Love If It Doesn't Cost Something

    When I was younger, I fell in and out of love with girls from high school through college and into my late 20's.  But it wasn’t love. When the initial exciting honeymoon period faded, I dropped the relationship like a bad habit. As soon as there was conflict or I saw something I didn’t like, I headed for the door.  And I was happy to be free again.  Until I realized I was lonely again, and started searching for someone else.  Finally in my late 20's, I stopped looking.  The minute I stopped looking, I was confronted with the young man in the mirror.  I didn't like what I saw. But I knew there was some good in me: I knew there was something of value. I had been writing poetry since I was in middle school.  I started to see myself poured out on those pages.  I looked at myself in depth.  I could see how I saw the world.  I wrote my feelings into concrete form.  I saw them on the page and I could see myself on the page. I began to grow. My spiritual journey began to take off.  In my late 20's and early 30's I got involved in caring ministries like Stephen Ministry at church.  Then I went to Ghana on a trip with Habitat for Humanity when I was 32. As I write this, I can see that my outward posture on this trip was a sign of my growth. I made some friends who I still talk to today. I enrolled in the Masters of Divinity program at a small satellite campus of Ashland Theological Seminary.  I drove an hour there every night after working an eight hour day.  I grew so much taking those classes.  Four years later, in 2011, when I was 35, I decided to take another mission trip.  I went with a group of young people from my church to a remote village in Guatemala to build houses. We stayed with a woman who had devoted her life to providing for the people in several villages that ringed a dormant volcano, where her small house was, perched half way down on the inside over the lake that had formed inside the volcano.  Again it was a purely spiritual journey for me.  I gave what I had to the people on the trip.  And they gave so much to me.

    But on this trip there was something new burning in me.  Just before I left for the trip, I connected with an old girlfriend from my first semester at college.  I had actually known her since 5th grade, and we orbited the same group of friends in high school and dated for a short time in college.  When I got back from Guatemala, we started dating long distance.  We did that for three years.  It was three years of ups and downs.  I stuck with it, and so did she.  She taught me so much about love.  And still does.  You see, after that three years of dating, we got engaged and then got married.  We have been married for 5 years.  I am still so terrible at loving her.  Up until recently, I had this one-sided view of love that it was always seeing the best in someone although they give you reasons not to. And accepting them, though you have seen the worst. And that was the crux of love for me. And so my love language was words of affirmation.  I wrote her so much poetry.  But over time my words began to fall on deaf ears.  You see, she was used to seeing another side of love.  It is the side of love that her family exchanges.  It is showing up for each other, come what may and cooperating to get things done.  It is interdependence.  This concept was somewhat foreign to me: I was fiercely independent because of the way I grew up. But the realization of the opposite side of love that my wife expected taught me that love is much bigger than seeing the best in the other person.  Sure that is part of it.  As is its compliment: accepting the worst.  But my wife taught me that love is also interdependence.  This is a stretch for me.  Love is not free. Love costs something. It stretches us.  Because of my wife's paradigm, I became aware that love requires some sacrifice on my part.  It was something that was obvious to her because of the interdependence of her family.  But clearly this was not something I knew previously, judging by my 20's.

    Before I began writing this blog post, my wife said that for the evening she would watch our two year old for an hour and a half so I could have a break. Then she wanted me to watch her for a bit so she could have a break and go run some errands for a friend of hers.  I said that would be fine. I'm not around much and I think it is important to give her breaks when I can. I headed up to the gas station for a smoke and said "this won't take an hour and a half."  I came back and went downstairs to write.

  Meanwhile my wife had gone on a short walk with our daughter.  When she got back she found me at the kitchen table.  Thinking it was her turn to go out, she assumed I was ready. I said that I wasn't done with my hour and a half yet and that she had misunderstood my comment. I went downstairs and started to write again. My daughter and my wife came downstairs and my wife started to say something.  Thinking she was infringing on my time to write, I cut her off and yelled, "damn it!"  But soon learned that she had only come down because I had absentmindedly left the basement door open and my toddler daughter had come down the stairs.  My wife had quickly followed her. 

  She had started to complain to me about leaving the door open when I had cut her off.  The perspective I had from the place I was in, is something I often go back to.  I perceive that she is always infringing on my writing time because she doesn't value it.  And to me, this writing and reflecting time is the very time I have to get filled up so I have something to give to her.  I am often frustrated that I don't get enough time to write.  And I was reacting out of this anger.  If I take a minute, I can look over our exchanges and see that my wife does appreciate my writing times.  It is just hard to get them with a two year old.  And that's not her or my daughter's fault.  It's just part of raising a toddler.  It costs something to raise and love a toddler.  They have needs for time and attention.  And so does my wife. It costs us something.  Later on, I found that it can cost everything one has.  And being willing to give all of that, even when the chips are down and one finds himself at the end of his rope: when one is "the bad guy" in situations in his life - even with those who love him, is the true cost of love.  My wife told me the other day that she deeply respects me and had written about it when we were dating. 

  If I were looking through this lens, I would not have reacted to her the way I did.  And if I kept the fact that it costs something to love in the forefront of my mind, I would be happy to give my wife her time away, even though it may mean not being able to write.  She wasn't even asking me to do that much.

   

The wisdom that love costs something is built into the Christian consciousness because of the death of Jesus.  Jesus was the ultimate lover of the people he came in contact with.  And because he loved the people around him, he was angered by the religious oppression of the Pharisees and Sadducees.  Over the many generations since the Exodus from Egypt, they had risen to the top of the stratified hierarchy of the Jewish religion.  And they taught that people were sinners and so they had to sacrifice to a demanding God.  But most people could not afford to buy animals for sacrifice or to give over hefty portions of the food they grew to live off of. In fact, the majority of the people listening to these "teachers of the Law" could not afford the animal and grain and wine sacrifices these "teachers" demanded. So, according to these religious leaders, the common people were stuck in their sin and they were cut off from God.  Jesus flipped this whole system on its head.  He showed people, even non-Jews (such as the despised Jewish/Canaanite "half-breeds" - the Samaritans, and the tax collectors for the occupying Roman enemy) that they were loved by a perfect parent-God.  And "the last would be first" in the Kingdom of God.  And very importantly, the "Kingdom of God" was not by-and-by, pie-in-the-sky.  It was There, then.  And it is Here, now.  The Pharisees and Sadducees were shocked to see him eating with sinners and fraternizing with the lowest of the low.  He interacted with, and even touched lepers.  This was unheard of! Lepers were tragically considered permanently unclean because the religious authorities assumed that either they or their parents must have sinned to have incurred such a grievous illness.  Lepers were isolated and excluded from society their whole lives.  They lived in colonies together and when they left their colonies on the road, they were required to shout "unclean, I am unclean!" to passers by so the travelers would know not to touch or interact with them. Many authorities assumed that just interacting with them made one unclean.  Others were considered unclean because of an act of adultery or, as I mentioned, because they collected taxes for the occupying Roman army (like Zacchaeus) or because they were Samaritan half-bloods (the woman at the well), or even just because they were women who could not reproduce or were sick (the woman with the issue of blood).  The list goes on and on.  Jesus went to all these people and showed them love.  Jesus showed a complete kind of love - unlike my incomplete love.  His love saw the best in people.  But it also put itself in harm's way to help others.  It cost him everything, including his life, in the end.   Jesus's love was also the act of practicing radical unconditional forgiveness.  "How many times must I forgive my brother who sins against me?  As much as seven times?" Peter asks. Jesus replies to him, "No, seventy times seven times."  (Matthew 18:22)  He was arguing for limitless grace for others, just as God's grace is limitless for us. Forgiveness is a core building block of love. And this is all part of Jesus-brand love.  Why?  Because Jesus was a rabbi who had experienced God's love ever since he was a boy and he wanted to bring this love to others.  Without limits or requirements. The best way to do this was to model God's love himself. 

    I believe Jesus wanted others around him to follow his lead.  Just like we are to follow his lead today.  When we are born, we are utterly selfish.  We are to grow, begin to love ourselves, and love others.  It starts for most of us with our close family.  As others show us love, we see all the various facets of love and begin to internalize them.  With some growth we begin to show this love to others.  I think that our whole lives are a growth towards learning to demonstrate all sides of love. Sometimes, we have to learn to love in spite of the very dark places we find ourselves in sometimes in life. It is so we can give a custom gift to every person we love. Following the teachings of Jesus and the examples of others help us do just that. The love my wife shows me is growing a new side of love in me.  Hopefully I will begin to demonstrate this side of love to her.  Presently it is hard to see through the forest for all the trees for me.  But love given by a single person spreads throughout his or her relationships with others.  Filled by this love, the people touched by it spread it on through their relationships.  Sooner or later, the world is a better place for it.  I think this is what Jesus wanted.  He wanted us to see we are in the Kingdom of God and love is the currency exchanged here.  I agree with Jesus: the Kingdom of God is not someplace or sometime else.  It is here now.  We just have to start living like it.  Paul and the author of 1 John expanded on this love.  If you want to see all the sides and facets of love, look to the bible.  I sent my wife John Lennon's "Imagine," sung by one of my favorite singers, Ava Cassidy.  Even though John Lennon says, "imagine there's no heaven," and "imagine there's no religion," I believe this was the song Jesus was singing too.  Religion had become a twisted, perverse, man-made set of oppressive laws in Jesus's day.  And, for me, the Gospels are filled with Jesus singing this song. And others following his lead.  There are Jesus's actions and his teachings on loving God, like the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), Paul's letters (especially 1 Corinthians) and the book of 1 John.  There is the romantic love of the Song of Songs where God is portrayed as the bridegroom, wooing us to him (or her, if you prefer).  Paul talks about us having the mind of Christ so we would understand God's love.  We are to have the mind of Jesus who said, "You must therefore set no bounds to your love, just as your heavenly Father sets none."  And of children, he said, "we are to become like these in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven."  I believe that loving relationship is the core building block of God.  It is the atomic unit that makes up his molecules that permeate the universe. And so He is here, there, everywhere - existing in the Kingdom that knows no man-made religious boundaries. And when we know God, it slowly becomes our core.  Our eyes slowly open to the love that others lavish on us.  And we, too, begin to demonstrate this love to others.  And so the Kingdom becomes real to those around us.  Love is given and, one person at a time, the Kingdom comes.

    There is a pervasive image of a banquet or feast in the bible. Feasts were an integral part of the Jewish religion. The feast is brought to the foreground early in Jesus's life with the inclusion of the story of the wedding feast in Cana where he changed the water to wine. Later, in Matthew, Jesus tells a parable of a king's wedding feast to describe the Kingdom of God.  (In Matthew 21 he is telling parables to describe the "Kingdom of God" and he continues with the Wedding Feast parable in Matt 22.)  We are meant to understood that this image of the King's wedding feast was an image of the Kingdom of God. In the parable, Jesus says that the "invited" people did not come, so the king sent out word to the street corners to invite anyone who would attend.  And then he sent his servant out a second time, to invite even more of the downtrodden and the worst of those who were considered "lost" and without hope.  Because of these themes in the bible and Jesus's words, I believe that the Kingdom of God is a vivacious feast and everyone is invited. No strings, beliefs, or actions required. What is exchanged there is love (spiritual food) instead of physical food.  But it is a pot luck. Everybody shows up with their own individual brand of love and starts to share it.  Others share theirs. When enough people show up, the whole of love is exchanged from all these unique pieces and peoples' unique gifts. And because God is made of love, he is present there in our midst.  The address of Kingdom of God becomes the corner of State and Main, the gas station, in a park, under a tree in fall, PetSmart, the grocery store, the hardware store, or anywhere we go.  If we show up with our own understanding of love and start to hand it out, when someone can receive it, God is present and we are in the Kingdom. Everyone has their own bent on love because of their own experiences in life. Some of us have been through the mud several times, some of us, many times more than that.  Others, I know, have been through much, much more. If everyone, including those whom we consider bad, or "our enemy," comes with however little or much they have of love, the whole of love will be realized. The more we step out and practice a little love, the more we begin to see it around us.  Even in the darkest of times.  In fact, those times are when I believe the light shines the brightest.  And this is a pervasive though in scripture. Imagine an angry, vile old man who suddenly reaches out it kindness in the darkest of times.  How brightly does his light shine!  When we show up there with love and others do too, I believe we are quite literally in Heaven for an instant.  And the people we touch can be in Heaven too, when they follow suit.  We can choose to endeavor to live there all the time.  And if we have that desire, and are willing to work at it, I think God will help us get there.  I think that is the trajectory of human growth.  We can all get to Heaven.  We can go there right now.  And we can choose to keep going there until we make our home there.  And stay there for eternity.  I am still a tentative and casual visitor. I just don't give love well yet.  But as I grow, I hope to find myself there more and more often.  And one day, perhaps I'll just stop leaving.

    I think that one of the most important features of love is its uniqueness.  Everyone has their own experiences of love growing up.  That is why it is so difficult to define love.  So an important part of entering into the reciprocal transaction of love is to be able to recognize love coming back from others, though it may not look like what we know of love.  My daughter has a Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood book called "Love Day."  The book shows how each of the characters uniquely shows love.  So children reading it can get this concept at an early age.  As our eyes are opened to all the different types of love that are gifted to us, the world becomes a much more loving place to live.  And it adds to our own repertoire of love.  So we can share what is needed with others.  This process is only now happening in me.  I am finally, after finding myself on one dark road after another, and just too many loses in my life,  waking up to see all the types of love I am bathed in every day.  

    For example, my wife has always had a rule that we should just as a matter of course be in couples' counselling throughout our marriage.  I agreed to this when we got married.  But with a particular counselor I felt like my wife was storing up all the things I had done wrong for several weeks and unleashing them on me in the counselor's office.  I saw it as the ultimate criticism.  And probably my greatest weakness is that I just can't take criticism and not see it as an attack on my character.  Some time has passed since these sessions and I can see now that what my wife was trying to do was to tend to our relationship.  She is very focused on relationships and wants to solve problems in them.  I now know this is one way she shows love - working on and trying to keep the relationship healthy.

    The more we can see love coming to us from others (ultimately from God), the more our love storage gets filled.  And so we have more to give of our own brand of love.  And perhaps we will even pick up other ways to express love.  Hanging out in the Kingdom becomes easier and easier. It slowly becomes more frequent.  And we go back there so much more quickly when we are faced with hardship.  And our attendance there pulls other people in.  Perhaps I will find that I no longer have to be a stray cat at the gate.  Perhaps instead, I can stay and make it home.