Love…Part 2

You’re a bird who’s been in a cage all your life, and suddenly, all the walls are gone, and you’re in the wide open. You’re so afraid you’re looking for any way back into the cage again. -Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers

Love is not just an emotion and the butterflies that we get in our stomach when a certain someone walks into the room. It’s so much more than that and legitimate love isn’t a feeling; it’s action.

My church has been going through the book of Hosea recently {which is seriously so great; you should go read it} and one of my all-time favorite books is a book titled Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers that is based on the story of Hosea and Gomer. So, I decided to re-read Redeeming Love {for I think the 6th time now} and gosh, it is so good. 

 

The book tells the story of Michael Hosea, a man of God, that is called to love Angel, a prostitute that has been so broken and calloused to love and it does it very well. This book leaves me in tears every time I read it and I think that’s because it is just so relatable and paints such a vivid picture of what legitimate true love is.

 It’s relatable in the sense that I know that I am like Angel. Angel is so severely calloused towards love that she can not accept it even when it’s given to her. She would rather run away from love towards abuse because that is what is comfortable for her and that is all she knows. I, like Angel, have a tendency to run from the legitimate true love that God offers me because I am comfortable in my sin and in the world.

Angel runs away multiple times from Michael Hosea and the safety that he offers her, yet he goes after her almost every single time. He actively makes the decision to love her, even when she so vehemently rejects it, and he shows her through his actions and his words that he truly does love her. And that is it. That is the picture of true love. God loves us so much that he chooses to love us, who are as looked down upon and even worse than prostitutes, time and time again even when we run away from Him and everything that He offers us. We run back into the cage despite being set free by Him.

It’s really hard to legitimately love anyone. People can get annoying and frustrating and just down right difficult to deal with. But if God can love us so endlessly when we are as terrible as we are, why shouldn’t we {at the very least} attempt to understand and love those around us? Yes, it most definitely will be far from perfect, but, we should at least try.

Love is action. Love is like Michael Hosea/Hosea running after and choosing to actively love the prostitute Angel/Gomer despite everything that she has done. True, legitimate love, is only attainable through Christ and although we {most likely} will fail to achieve it,we can try! But to even attempt it, we first need to accept the redeeming love of God and stop running away from it. Only then can we even begin to understand and put into action the amazing love that we are so unworthy of. True love is tough, but it is so beautiful and I thank God that He loves me {because boy am I unworthy}.

God had cast a man and woman out of Paradise. Yet, for all their human faults and failures, God had shown them the way back in. -Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers

The King of Hearts

The King laid his hand upon her arm, and timidly said `Consider, my dear: she is only a child!’

The King of Hearts is not your typical King-like character in Alice in Wonderland. He is not the strong and assertive male figure that you would expect simply because he holds the title of King. Quite contrarily, he is submissive to the Queen of Hearts and not very outspoken at all. He tries to calm the Queen in her fits of passion and he serves almost like her quiet conscience {which she only listens to temporarily either way}.

The King of Hearts shows repeatedly, in the small amount of times that he does appear in the novel, sound logic that juxtaposes the passionate and fiery attitude of the Queen. In that way, I think that the two complement each other despite them being two very different entities. They both have very different ways of thinking and the Queen doesn’t always listen to the King, although his logic is much more sound, and yet, they are together. They {most likely} live together and are {most likely} married. He is timid and doesn’t always assert himself confidently and so it’s easier for the Queen to ignore him, but she does at least seem to consider his ideas. And I think that in this way, the King and Queen of Hearts is quite like our minds and hearts.

Our minds are always thinking logically {or attempting to at the very least} and tend to be the source of our decision-making. Often times though {or more}, that sound logic or thinking tends to be overpowered by another entity within us, our hearts. I can think of numerous times {probably too many to count} when my logic was overpowered by the desires of my heart. It’s difficult to find a balance between the two, but we kind of are required to in life. You learn to balance the decisions that you make between your heart and your mind because whenever you make a decision, there {usually} is an input from both parties. Maybe you have a tendency to be very level-headed and logical; you’re more like the King of Hearts. And on the other hand, maybe you have a tendency to be spontaneous and do whatever your heart desires, well then, you’re much more like the Queen of Hearts in that aspect.

I think that the heart and the mind are always at war with each other when it comes to making decisions, but eventually, one always seems to speak out louder than the other and hence, a decision is made. The aftermath of that decision though, could be equally as confusing or  be the source of another war between the two. I used to be more like the King of Hearts; my mind used to win more battles. But in the past couple of years, I think my heart won out more battles and I’m not quite sure which of the two I prefer. Both have definitely caused their fair share of difficult or confusing outcomes and there have also been times when I thought that I was listening to one party, when in reality, I was listening to the other.

Honestly, it’s confusing and difficult, but! I think the more that you experience life and the different outcomes that the decisions of the heart or mind bring, it gets a tiny bit easier the next time {my personal opinion}. So which one do you favor, the King of Hearts – your mind, or the Queen of Hearts – your heart?

The Caucus Race

So if you’ve ever watched Alice in Wonderland or even actually read the novel, {which honestly is great, you should go read it} there is this one part where all the creatures and Alice run around in a circle basically just because the Dodo told them to. That is literally the reason why all these creatures just start running around in a circle…because the Dodo bird told them to. Yes, it was a suggestion made so that they could get dry, but, it still is absolutely nonsensical and well, bluntly put, stupid. Now Alice in Wonderland is a nonsensical world so this odd {albeit stupid} suggestion is a tad bit justified, but in our world, it just doesn’t seem to fit in, right? Contrary-wise, I think this definitely resonates and can be carried over to our reality {which can also be nonsensical if you look for it}.

How? Well, think about it, how many times in life have you been given suggestions or “advice” about how to act in certain situations or circumstances? You’ve probably thought of a number most definitely greater than 1 but probably less than 1,000,000,000,000. {Unless you tend to ask others for input on how to act in every single little aspect of your life; if so, then I am sorry, I really do not mean to offend you.} Basically, we all seek input and counsel from others when making {usually} larger life decisions and sometimes even for the smaller ones. We, as human beings, are relational and so we seek out other human beings to help us with these more difficult decisions. Now is this a bad thing? Well, I say both no…and yes.

The no part seems easy to justify. Often times we aren’t always able to see all the different angles of a circumstance and another input from someone with a different point of view can help to bring the circumstance into a more clear understanding. Also, sometimes we just aren’t the best at making the decisions that can help us and we tend to mess up, so it helps to have someone else guide us along the way that has already been down that road before so that we trip and fall less. It just makes sense that sometimes our decision making can be impaired by something, whether that be our investment in the decision, our attachment to a person or object involved in the decision, or whatever else it may be, so outside perspectives and input should be a positive necessity.

 

But I said both no and yes. Yes, outside input and advice, sometimes really aren’t the best things. I think that they most definitely can be bad things. Why? Well, have you ever heard of the saying, too many cooks spoils the broth? This little saying basically states that when you have too many people working on one project/thing together, such as multiple cooks trying to cook one broth, the overall project/broth gets ruined because there are just too many different inputs/ways to do it. And just like that, I think that there are certain situations or circumstances in which a decision must be made that when given too much input or too many different perspectives, ultimately leads to the wrong decision.

How does that happen? Well, here is a very simplified little example. Let’s say you’re trying to decide on a certain pair of shoes to buy and you’re down to two different pairs. Now you like both and can’t really seem to choose one, so you decide to ask different friends and family members to help you choose. The majority of your friends and family tell you to buy one pair, but at the end of the day you realize that you kinda like the other pair that no one actually chose better. Which one do you buy? Do you buy the ones that everyone else liked? Or do you buy the ones that you ultimately like? If you decide to buy the ones that everyone else likes, then yes, everyone will compliment your shoes and tell you how great you look, but will you ultimately be happy and satisfied with those shoes knowing that there was another pair that you liked better? I don’t believe you will. But if you choose to buy the ones that you ultimately liked, I think that you will appreciate the shoes so much more and in the end, your family and friends will still tell you that you look great regardless of the shoes you chose. So should you make your decision based on the views of others or yourself? It comes down to you. How true to yourself {as cliche as that sounds} are you willing to be?

Me, I am a people-pleaser, meaning that I make my decisions based on others and not myself. BUT! Once I got into college, I think I slowly started to shed that part of me. Why? Because in my freshmen year of college, I had gotten myself into a situation where I was unsure of what to do and so I sought out the advice of others that I believed would guide me in the right way because they were older and more experienced than me and because I was told that this was the “right” thing to do. Well, I received their input and their advice, but what they told me, was the exact opposite of what I actually wanted to do. Despite that though, they were “right” and so I made my decision based upon their input and advice and well, let’s just say that I was quite miserable. Then a friend of mine, who saw me in my miserable state, told me this, take what everyone says with a grain of salt. I had taken so much into consideration what others said and I was so consumed with wanting to please them that I had lost sight of myself. Just like the creatures in the caucus race of Alice in Wonderland, I was running around in circles trying to get dry simply because someone else told me to. I think this is when I first really realized that it’s not always the smartest idea to blindly take others’ advice and input.

Yes, it is wise to seek the counsel of others and yes, it is wise to heed the counsel of others, but I also believe that it is wise to take into consideration, your own heart and yourself. Ultimately, you are the one that is affected the most by whatever decision you are making and you are the one that has to deal with the repercussions of that decision no matter what they may be, so while yes, it is not a bad thing to heed the advice of others, it can be if that causes you to lose sight of who you truly are.

So please don’t be like the creatures and Alice running around in circles blindly and foolishly because a Dodo bird told them to, take in what the Dodo bird says, but take it with a grain of salt. If it ultimately is going to cause you to go against what your heart says to do and you know that it is going to cause you to be unhappy because it is simply not you, be wary of the counsel and don’t take it 100%. Don’t run the caucus race.

 

Love Part 1

Note: I wrote this a while ago, but didn’t get around to posting it until now…

For me, I think the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word love is lots of cliche romantic stuff; all cheesy and corny and make you feel butterflies in your stomach type of stuff. But I want to take this post to talk more about legitimate love. The kind that they don’t always show in movies or in novels; the kind that is raw and real.

Honestly, the most raw and real form of love that there ever was and ever will be happened 2000 years ago on a cross, but other than that, I think that the closest thing to legitimate love would have to be family. Now I know that not everyone’s families are perfect or all lovey dovey and I promise you that mine is far from perfect too. But, I think that despite all the fighting and shouting and hurt that my family and I can cause one another, the fact is, at the end of the day we can still love one another and forgive one another making our love as close to the real thing as it can get.

One perfect example would be earlier today. My mom came home from work and she found the house to be quite a bit messy {my brothers and I, as well as my dad, hadn’t done any cleaning up after we got home from church} and so she got a bit upset. So naturally, my mom started to nag us for not tidying up and she was frustrated and tired but then my dad started to get upset as well and then well, shouting ensued. Then of course my dad dragged us all into the room and then lectured us on being lazy and what not and basically, we were not very happy and quite upset with one another for a bit. But, despite all of that nastiness, we had decided to go out for dinner altogether earlier today because it had been a while since all of us were home, so we piled into the car and drove out to Pasadena to grab a bite to eat. Now when we initially made our way over there, we weren’t all in the best mood and we were all still kind of upset with each other, but magically, by the time we got to Pasadena, we were all a-okay and dandy; laughing and having a great time. All in all, we had an awesome dinner and some even better dessert and we came home happy, forgetting that we were ever upset with each other at all.

Now looking back at that, it makes me think to myself that that is love. Choosing to overlook the frustration and anger and instead choosing to try and be happy and spend time with one another despite the annoyance that we may have is an example of love. Part of it may be that we are kind of stuck with each other as family, but it was just as easy for us to hold a grudge and for all of us to have just locked ourselves up in our rooms after fighting and letting our wounds fester instead of forcing ourselves to make up and go out to dinner together. It honestly would have been much easier at the time to just ignore my parents and my brothers and just hole up in my room with some Netflix. But because we still wanted to spend time with each other and because we love each other, we chose to force ourselves to overlook the anger and frustrations and instead try to focus on the good. In the car, we purposely tried to compliment one another and focus on the good and make each other smile and laugh because that’s what family does; that’s what love does.

Basically, I am thankful for a family that reflects love and shows me love that I am most definitely not deserving of and I am thankful for the love that they show me because they choose to do so despite my flaws; yelling and all.

 

Alice Lidell

For me personally, I find myself very much lacking in the department of simplicity. I have a tendency to overthink things, further complicating situations that really aren’t that bad and also a knack for making things way more complex in my mind than they ever need to be. This results in quite a bit of pressure and stress on myself and I thought for a sizable amount of time that this was normal and that this is what made me driven and built for success. Well…as of late, I’ve been realizing that maybe that may not be the case. I’ve been learning to let go a bit more and to simplify things, like Alice.

Alice is a little girl. I don’t think that this idea sinks readily into our minds, but Alice can’t be more than ten years old {at most} in the novel. She stumbles into a world that is completely and utterly nonsensical, yet instead of being thrown into turmoil over that fact, she enjoys it and makes the most out of it. That is something that we, as we grow older and older, have more and more difficulty accomplishing. Alice understands that not everything has to be as complicated or complex as we make it out to be. She understands that every day is one that is different and that we, as people, change. She understands that life itself, can be and is simple.

One of the biggest aspects to simplifying life that resonates with me, especially as of late, is the idea that I can’t go back and change my past. It’s useless to think of all the what if’s and what could’ve been‘s because it’s yesterday; it’s already over. The decisions I made then, the course of actions I took, the people I met, that’s all history. All of those decisions and actions and people shaped me into who I am today and guided me towards the path that I am on currently. It may not exactly be the picture perfect, best-case scenario plan that I had thought up, but there’s no point in trying to think of what I could’ve done differently or what I could’ve done better or what I could’ve not done because it’s done. {That sounds super final and poignant and I should probably just leave it there but there is still a bit that is left to be said}.

Life, when viewed from the lens of a naive and innocent child, is much more simple and full than when viewed from the skewed and heavily burdened lens of an overthinking adult. With that said, I know that I am not anywhere near “old” nor do I view myself as an adult {although technically I sort of am one}, but I still would like to be more like Alice because I am closer to the overthinking adult side of the scale rather than the naive and innocent child side {although others might think differently}.

Basically, life is simple and yet as we grow older, due to the pressures of society and the standards that we and others place for ourselves, we tend to weave life into a much more complex web. But I challenge you to take time today to sit there and un-weave that web a tiny bit and simplify things; view things through the lens of a child and you might be surprised at the beauty in the utterly nonsensicality that is…life.