Love

So before I post this piece, it should be noted that 1) I am not engaged and 2) I am not contemplating marriage :). However, this piece does describe what I feel love, the love one feels for a special person in his/her life, is. Maybe my ideals are skeward or maybe a fantasy, but in my mind, this is what love is. Enjoy :)

What is love? This Bible gives us its definition in 1 Corinthians 13 of what love is, yet in reality, Christ is the ultimate example of love because he was willing to give up his life to save mine. However, while this is a very important type of love, it is not the one I am questioning. Merely, I am pondering what it means to look someone you care deeply for in the eyes and say "I love you" and how those words can penetrate the heart. And I have come up with the following conclusions.

To be loved is to be found infinitely valuable. You drink in the words of someone you love as if whatever they are saying is the last thing you will ever hear. Their sadness is a death to you, and one critical word or disappointed look from this person makes you feel horrifically ill. Their opinion is the ultimately important one… This person alone carries enough weight to make you stop believing lies about yourself—deep lies that you are insignificant, invisible, undeserving of happiness. One genuine smile from him or her heals everything.

To be loved is to be infinitely meaningful. Someone who is loved is endlessly fascinating. You notice and want to notice everything about that person; you never tire of taking in details that would be insignificant to anyone else. The way a piece of hair falls over someone’s face, a pattern of always forgetting to put some small thing away… A nervous tic like rubbing fingers together or nibbling on a lower lip. A subtle change of expression that no one else would detect. The incomprehensible thing about it is that these seemingly worthless details suddenly take on immeasurable worth when they correspond to the one you love. An object itself becomes oddly endearing, endearingly familiar… Like a watch someone always wears. The watch is a symbol of the life you know so intimately.

To be loved is to be infinitely appealing. Even the faults of someone who is loved are somehow almost adorable. The imperfection of a face becomes the very standard of flawlessness. Like a picture drawn by a small child—the stick figure isn’t proportional, the name is spelled wrong, (furthermore, an ‘e’ is backwards) there’s a smudge in the corner and the paper is wrinkled—but you wouldn’t change a thing. In your eyes it is nothing but perfect; impossible to be improved upon.

To be loved is to be assured that you are lovable. That you are accepted; you have the unconditional promise of a place of shelter in another person. To be loved is to know that someone has agreed to take on the responsibility of caring for you; that someone has dared to essentially tie his or her fate to yours (no matter what may happen in the future) because he or she has judged it worth it, merely to be with you. To be loved is to know that you are not alone… to know that someone else has refused (and will always refuse) to leave you alone

To be loved is to be respected and trusted and hoped in and waited for… It is to be deferred to, to be truly understood, to be believed, to be daydreamed about, to be surprised with presents, to be saved from yourself, to be left notes saying where someone has gone, to be defended, to be provided for, to be listened to, to be whispered silly things in your ear… To be loved is to be comfortable and warm next to your favorite person on the couch with lots of blankets and cups of coffee or tea or whatever it is, while you’re in pajamas. (To be loved is to be at home) To be loved is to know that someone enjoys your company. Being loved is to have someone to share the mundane burdens of life with, like shutting lights off when you’re already in bed and paying bills and switching burnt out light bulbs and changing car tires and cleaning up spilled food. When you’re outside driving or running and all the sudden you see something devastatingly pretty like a butterfly on a flowering branch—to be loved is to find, in moments like that when you want someone else to see what you see—that you are actually not by yourself.

To be able to love another person—to have been given the license to truly, actively love someone—is a very high privilege. So high it’s almost unfathomable that anyone would ever choose to grace anyone else with it. It must be earned; it’s not something anyone should ever simply expect

To receive love from another person… to truly be the object of love to someone else… is an unthinkable gift. A searingly inhuman offering of mercy. To be loved is such a high award (and, as it would seem, such a high degree of happiness)