"All You Need Is Love, Love Is All You Need"
-The Beatles
I wonder how love will fit into my life in the future? I hope to always know the love of my children, my family and of course my friends; but what about the love of a man? My love for Scott was so deep. He was part of my heart, part of my soul. I never imagined I would no longer have that. I took it for granted. I never expected to be left with a hole like this in my heart. How does some other man just walk in and fit into that hole? Mesh with this life I already have? The life I built with another man? It sounds dreadful. It sounds messy. It sounds hard. I miss love - the intimacy, the fun, the security. New love is especially fun until the day comes when it’s not anymore. And no matter what people tell themselves – that day does come. Nothing stays new forever. After the new ends then you have to get real and there has to be something there to make it really work. How can you have real substance if you still have a gaping hole? I think people get stuck trying to figure out how to fit this new person into that old hole which will never work. They say only time and God can heal that hole – not a new person, not money, not a hobby. Living with a hole is hard – really hard. To live with the hole means that you have to admit you are broken, you have to experience the pain and you have to reach out for healing. At least I know as each day passes mine is getting smaller. Someday it will be healed and I will be whole and ready for love again! Then it wont be dreadful and messy like it would be right now. It will still have challenges because of course I will be walking into that relationship with “pre-existing conditions”; but it wont be like trying to make someone else squeeze into a hole they didn’t make! I am so blessed to have so much love in my life.
I decided to dig around in the bible this morning for verses about love and of course the one that 1st came to mind was from 1st Corinthians. (It's no surprise that my favorite verse is about love.) I really poured over the whole 13th chapter. It has different meaning when you read it all. I love what it says and it really it is so true. When we are in the presence of the Lord, faith and hope will no longer be needed but Love will always remain. I want the Lord to heal my spiritual "hole" now so that my heart will be ready and able to accept love when that day comes.
1 Corinthians 13
1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
