Why we love...

I read a lot of books. I read because I almost feel more alive inside these proxy worlds than in my own sometimes. I read because I feel these characters. I read because I can travel and see and smell and learn. I read because wisdom comes to me, from the conversations with the characters... I read because I see myself in these people, and I see patterns and types and life. I read so I can live better and so that I can know myself.

I've been reading Much Ado About Nothing, which is a play I didn't much like a while ago... but this time around I've been seeing myself in Beatrice, and Beatrice in me.

BEATRICE: Just, if he send me no husband; for the which blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening. Lord, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face: I had rather lie in the woollen.
LEONATO: You may light on a husband that hath no beard.
BEATRICE: What should I do with him? dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting-gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man: and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than aman, I am not for him. 

I've been thinking of why we love... why we want love, why we crave love, and why we'd turn it away. Part of the reason the deception worked in Much Ado... the deception that brought Beatrice and Benedick together, is that they saw only parts of themselves clearly... they saw their pride, but not that others saw it. They thought their derisive humor hid their hearts... and... so often, I do the same... I tell jokes about what causes my heart the most ache. 


I've also read Till we have faces by CS Lewis (btw, did anyone else know he wrote fiction for adults?!)... and the dilemma with love... I have been feeling it so intensely lately. Do we love so that we are loved? Do we love so that we are known? Or do we love to give selflessly with the ability to be reviled, disobeyed, rejected and spurned... and still love?  


So... Imma add a disclaimer right here that this post is very difficult to write and very personal and yet, there is this burning within me to write it. 


It is very difficult to live in London far away from my family. If life was a scattergraph, I would be the dot in the center, and my family is clustered quite far from me... I feel so separate and lonely... as tho I would always be alone. As if no one owed me their love as family does... And so I am the anomaly on the scatter graph, and the line of best fit doesn't touch me or even come near. 

God, in his words to me, often says to love, love, love selflessly and often. And I feel awkward, not wanting to love and serve so that it isn't awkward (I always feel awkward... like a bit of Luna Lovegood lives in me), and yet, God says it will not be awkward because He's made me silly and whimsy and sturdy and a bit loud and a bit quiet and a bit of a mess and a bit particular and it all blends together into a squishy mess of Jenny love which blesses people (I hope). And 90-95% of my love is that I just see such awesomeness in people and my heart overflows to them... and 5-10% is that fear. The fear that if I need something, I need to build up good will with people so that when it's my turn, they will love me. You see, somewhere, tho my love is freely given, I insult others by assuming they will not so freely love. I assume I will have to earn it, and pay it back, and so sum up love into accounts, tho I am free enough with my own bank. 

That fear, that loneliness, tho I'm ashamed to say it, has revealed itself in the idea that if I had a bf or a husband, I would have a family... I would be ok, because someone would have to love me. 

It's so incredibly untrue and it's so selfish. I've known enough married people to know they have worries new and plenty, and life, tho some things become simpler, others become much more difficult. I know that we don't love so that we have security, emotional or otherwise... 

God whispers in my ear to leave my heart open so love may find me, to not have the attitude that I do not need man, but that, at the same time, I don't need man. I don't need him, yet the attitude of it is unbecoming... God is ever all I need, He provides all my security, emotional and otherwise, He fills me with the love I pour out, yet, my heart must be open to receive love as well as give it. 

And I am so bad at receiving love... I don't know what to do or say... It's like deep down inside me somewhere, I have believed the lie that I am unlovable... that I can expect friendliness, but not friendship, helpfulness, but not devotion, handshakes, but not embraces... I have to build up the good will... I have to serve, I have to give, I have to love, love, love... 

And I'm a mess... I don't love and offer and give because I think so highly of myself... No... 

Friday night, at Pentecost, I had a vision... I was a little girl in a pink dress, with pink bows and I stood on a great precipice. (Pink = my feminism (which, is something I'm also trying to learn)). All around me were cliffs and the sky was full of the presence of God in the dark hills... Jesus stood with me, and in my hand was a small communion candle. It was a tiny speck in the bleak darkness, the wind whipping around me and tugging at my skirts... yet I held my light up to Jesus, out to the presence of God in the holy dark. It was a speck, but I held it alight because I somehow felt I had to. It wasn't much, but I stood on my tip toes... my white shoes scratching on the rough rocks... the wind whipped at my candle, but it didn't go out... it stayed lit and at the horizon far off over the hills the first rays of a dawn were erupting from the darkness... not even the rays but the first glow when the sky begins to seem orange. 

There is never anyone else there... just Jesus and myself and the holy darkness... I'm not shining it for anyone but Jesus... yet somehow I have to keep shining it. Love is such a strange thing in that way... the idea that we're doing something for Jesus who is the source of our love, the motive for our love and who brims us over with love, and that we love the people around us, our friends and family because we see lovable things all over their lives. Love is this morphous thing of for us and in us and for them and in them and because of them and us and God... it never has one motive... it's messy and manic and even in the softest sigh of contentment with our beloved, we can feel 10,000 things before we've drawn breath again. 

So in all of this mess, my whole world has been changed... the idea of loving because He first love us... it's exploded, in a good way. The love He pours into me, it seems the entire impetus for all life and feeling, yet it is free, so it leaves space for fear and the question... will I be loved? It isn't only one way, but it's leaving space to receive... it's always pouring out, but always taking in as well... 

Colossians says "perfect love casts out fear"... and so I believe it does... but it leaves room so that it could exist, and then God fills it up with his love. 

Which brings me back to Beatrice... how she is so in me... this Beatrice, who seems so light hearted, and so full of love and feeling... so full of passion. She cannot believe that a man exists who could suit her... she sees  all that she offers, and she sees all her inadequacies... She sees what an utter mess she is, what a mess love is... She sees and she is afraid... so she loves Hero and blesses Leonato and her family, yet never lets there be any space for reciprocity. She thinks no one could love her, so she stops up the hole with jokes... Oh Beatrice, I have had your pride and your fear and your despair in my heart--God forgive me. I have laughed it off... but today I cannot. Today, I cried of the broken heart I've been trying to hide. Broken from the lies that have been building up there... the lies that I cannot and will never be loved. 

Oh that I would open my eyes and see the love that is already before me... I am already secure. I am already fiercely loved. I am furiously blessed. And I will practice leaving that space open in my heart to receive others with the same quiet, happy grace that I would have them receive my fumbling, silly offering... the tiny spark of candle in the holy dark.