The Severity of Love

"Love isn't love until you give it away, and the cycle of giving is not complete until the love is successfully received."


Love is patient, love is kind, but one thing love isn't is stupid!  Who are you stupidly giving your love to?  Boy, we just jumped in right away this morning, huh?  I'm not quite sure why this is on my mind, so I can tell you that the end of this blog is going to be a surprise to even me.  This is what you call a "free flow" blog.  So I guess this is more in my heart than on my mind...

Love is one of the most talked about yet misunderstood concepts in existence.  It's one of those things that most attempt to learn through trial and error.  What's sad about that is that it has been defined for us, but no one seems to have the patience to follow the steps necessary to understand its meaning, therefore causing us to be destroyed by the one thing sure to build us up! Then we get mad at love as if love set out to personally annihilate us.  Love isn't destroying us, nor are we destroying love.  WE are destroying ourselves and blaming love.  We talked in an earlier blog about fornication--acting on something before its time.  Love is the one thing we fornicate more than anything else.  That's why the outcome of it is destruction.  Love takes time to build; it's not a fly-by-night kind of thing. Think about it.  If you want to be in a loving relationship with another person, chances are you want it to last a lifetime, right?  Well how can something built in a matter of hours, days or months last a lifetime?  Where would the staying power be?  The staying power is what holds together the foundation the relationship is built upon.  In just hours, what kind of foundation can be laid?  Do yourself a favor: before seeking love, continuing in love or giving up on love, ask yourself how solid you want your love to be. This question makes me think of the materials the homes of three little pigs were made of: straw, stick, and brick.  I think, first,  of the passage in the Bible that deals with the word falling by the wayside, among the thorns and thistles, on stony ground, and on good soil (Matthew 13:3-8).   These materials represent the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years you're willing to put into the love you have in your life.  If you want it quick and easy, you can have that, but it won't last long.  If you want it a little more sturdy, you can have that, too, but it won't last much longer than the other.  Real love requires hard work and the commitment necessary to keep it going.  If you want your love to last a lifetime, you're going to have to put your back into it!  You're going to need a helmet, some knee pads, some good elbow grease, stock in companies that produce Motrin, Acetaminophen,  Ibuprophen, etc., and if you have a man like mine, the good stuff: Grey Goose, Morphine, Elavil, Haldol, Oxycontin, Lortab,--ah, heck, for mine, I just need Jesus! Straight up! (Just kidding, about the drugs and alcohol.  Not kidding about needing Jesus, though!)


Now, I know that many of us get the fact that love takes a lot of work.  Love can be both kind and severe, but look at the severity of love--or should I say what the severity of love isn't?  The natural work of love requires blood, sweat and tears, so be prepared to go through some things you never thought you'd ever have to deal with in life (assuming you thought about it at all!  Most people don't.).  These are the things that your mate and you have to experience in order to grow and become the products of your love.  If you're doing something unnatural in order to have love, well, I don't know what to tell you.  Good luck, maybe?  LOL  Natural love work includes things like having patience as your mate figures out that the job he/she settled for isn't going to pay off like the career using his/her real knowledge, talent or gift would (patience).  The payoff here will be growth.  Unnatural love work in this case would be lying and covering for him/her as he/she does unlawful or immoral things to make money (ignorance).  If you need further breakdown: don't hide his drugs, lie about where he was when a crime was committed,  sell his kiddie porn, etc.  Natural work: giving him/her a piece of advice that is so plain and simple to you, but it takes a year or three before he/she applies it simply because he/she doesn't want you to have been right (stubbornness).  The payoff there will be trust in the future.  Unnatural: walking away from what you know is right in order to keep him/her happy.  Neither of you are going to be happy, but when you are sitting in jail, sleeping on the streets, nursing more children than you can handle, working two or three jobs waiting on his/her dream to materialize, etc., you're going to feel mighty STUPID because you knew from the beginning what needed to be done but you walked away from it (desperation).  The payoff: unhappiness and absolute REGRET.  Natural work: listening to his point of view even when you are absolutely certain you're right (fairness).  The payoff here is wisdom.  You may learn that there are more than one way to get things done, and you will ultimately grow and mature.  He may learn that there's a better way to accomplish his goal or to complete his task, but he may just need to talk it out first in order to understand what he needs to do.  Unnatural: following him because he's the man or her because she's a woman when really you're doing it because don't want him/her to leave you (fear/selfishness).  The payoff: loneliness.  You're ultimately going to end up be alone anyway.  Even if you stay together, you're going to feel alone because you've agreed to be just a tail in the relationship.  When he/she starts taking up time with someone else, it will be because he/she will be drawn to what's in the other person's head.  So DON'T be a tail; keep your head and use it!  Have you ever heard of anyone saying "two tails are better than one"?  No, any relationship only needs one ass, if there has to be any at all.  The correct saying is that "two heads are better than one".  If you're not going to use your head in your relationship, what really can you expect out of it?

The kindness of love in a relationship is patience, goodness, kindness, and self-control; the SEVERITY of love in a relationship is exactly the same.  So be patient, good, kind, and self-controlled, not to the point of stupidity, but to the point of growth and solidarity.  These are the things that long lasting love is made of.