Monday, July 19, 2010

Who do you choose to love?


Transition, it seems to always throw your thoughts on where you've been. Looking back you see truly how this moment in time brings to light everything you've walked through. It gives you the clarity to see where your going. All the good times and bad bring you to where you now are. I love to capture this in a moment of time as I look down from a mountain I've climbed. I trace back all the steps it took to get on that big hill, and stand amazed that God gave me a body that could conquer such a task.



Of course some moments filled with awe give themselves more easily than others to break into such reflections. I wonder if Jesus ever laid in the garden of Gesthemene under the stars with the Father and contemplated the moments of his past to really understand where he is now. What where those thoughts? How does the man whom the universe was created for look back at his life? Is he so sure of his destiny that he does not need to reflect, does he only reflect knowing the beauty of what he is doing, or does he ever wonder if it is all worth it?

Leaving California gave me such thoughts, and I had many mountains to look down along the way as I traveled back to Colorado. One thought stuck in my mind more than any other as I pressed forward in time to see where I was headed. It surfaced by the many people I was so blessed to spend a year with. Many of whom I would probably not have choosen to live life with, and yet these very people seemed to be the ones that so dramatically impacted my life. I came to understand that Love is primarily a choice. It seems we often think that there are people that are destined for our lives and relationships will be easy, because they were meant for each other. If life were such a reality I do not think love in it's truest sense would be quite so profound. Love is not what you think it is. Love is choosing.


Who is worth my love? I sat consumed by the thankfulness of people so different from myself. I realized that you must choose to love people not because they are cute, or enjoy everything you do, or have the exact same values you do, or exact same convictions, or exact same desires in life. You choose to love them simply because they are worth it. Everybody in life will hurt you. Everybody in life will piss you off, offend you, use you, leave you, some forever, some for a couple of minutes, but they all will never love you perfectly. Yet I find that if through it all, you look into people and determine that their life is worth it, loving them will be worth it. The beauty is that you can stand in reflection, not of what hasn't happened, but what has. I realized that those thoughts are the thoughts God has of me. He loves me not because of what I have accomplished, not because I did all the things I was supposed to, not because of the money I gave, the orphans I loved, the people I helped, the way I worshipped him, not because I agreed with him, not because I had all the same convictions he had, not because I had the perfect theology, but simply because he decided I was worth it. The weight of that choice seems heavy enough to crush me completely, and yet in it I feel completely free.


I am thankful for the people that love me like that. Thank you for showing me what love is.