on falling in love.

Two weeks ago, I caught my heart falling in love with one of my best friends. Entranced by the silent beauty of the post-midnite hours where time ceases ticking and instead gently drifts and quietly ebbs. Warmed by the soft yellow lites overhead and the honey-sweetened Brazilian tea. Held in the strong yet gentle arms of one who has known the depths of loss, rejection, hope, and triumph. Side-by-side in a tea shop booth, drifting in and out of wakefulness, my mind held on to fragmented sentences of his comforting voice telling me why I am treasured and loved. My consciousness was drifting into dream land, but my heart was fully awakened. Forcing my eyes open for the thirty minutes that it took me to drive home, my mind finally kicked into gear and let my heart know what was really going on. You're falling in love! it said. Foolish heart. Right after a conversation of why you two aren't best for each other and should not pursue romance, you go and let yourself fall for him! What are you thinking? Are you masochistically trying to get yourself hurt?? My mind wouldn't let me forget the pain of a broken heart, and tried to preemptively talk my heart out of loving so that I wouldn't be threatened by rejection down the road. But, in customary fashion, my heart declined the well-meant warnings. It's okay, my heart whispered. I'm meant to be in love. 

Throughout the next week, Jesus continued to whisper the same curious words in my ear. It's okay, beloved, he said. You're meant to be in love. WHAT?! Jesus, of all people, YOU should know that I'm meant to guard my heart. I'm meant to protect it from the wiles of love-hungry men who intend to steal its treasures and loot its resources. I can't go giving my heart away to people who I'm not meant to marry, or eventually I won't have a whole, in-tact heart to give to my husband, right?

That's what the church always taught me!!

It's not what I'm teaching you, Jesus replied. The only command I gave you was to LOVE. Fall in love with me and that which I'm in love with. Your love is not a depleting resource. The more you give away, the more I will fill you up, and the more you will have to give. The purpose of living, my dear, is falling in love. 

To fall in love is to see only the best in someone; to overlook their faults; to call out the Beauty within them; to refuse to give up on them. It is when your heart says to their heart, 'You are Beautiful.' It is deep crying out to deep. It is namaste: the Spirit in me recognizes the Spirit in you. It is an attraction that sees imperfections as a unique source of wonder and artistry. It is a determination to do only that which shows the utmost consideration to the needs of a person's heart. It that not how Christ has loved us?

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." -Jesus

In church, I was taught, "Jesus is madly in love with you." I was also taught, "Love people as Jesus has loved you." I was NEVER taught, "Be madly in love with everyone," although it seems as though this should be the logical progression. Fall in love with everyone? Yes. That's it. That's our purpose in living.  That's how everyone will know we're His- if we love like Him.