so i have returned from the chasms of blog idleness and i hope to be a little more frequent in my writings. as i’ve said in earlier entries, i can’t just write to write. i have to be inspired. well i suppose i have been inspired to write a few times since my last entry, but i didn’t know if it was anything i wanted out in the open. i’m not one to hide behind anything, but i guess there are some things that i wanted to keep for myself……and another person.

as the title of this entry might suggest, i am a fool. now you may be thinking to yourself, ‘hey…i already knew that’. so i guess i should go on to say that i am a fool in love. and she is amazing. it’s a funny thing. love, that is. i’ve thought i was in love before. twice, actually. but those times weren’t really anything compared to what i have now. and that’s a bit of a scary thought. if what i thought i had before wasn’t love, then i guess it’s possible that what i have right now isn’t love either. sure i wholeheartedly believe that it is, but then there’s always that chance that she isn’t ‘the one’.

however, i can’t imagine a feeling as deep or as true as what i have right now. and the fact that it’s reciprocal just makes it all the better and more ‘real’.

but i digress. my real intention in this post is to discuss love in general. love is by far the most complicated emotion there is. as i have alluded to, it’s even possible for one to believe they are in love, only to find out at a later date that they were a lot farther from it than they would like to have been.

i often wonder why God set love up to be so confusing to us humans.

but then…maybe it isn’t confusing at all. aren’t we told, after all, that God is love? isn’t it clear that love is patient and kind, not envious or boastful or proud or rude or self-serving or easily angered, not delighting in evil but rejoicing in truth, always protecting, trusting, hoping, and persevering? we’re told to love one another as we love ourselves, but do we really know what that means? husbands are told to love their wives as Christ loves the Church, yet spousal neglect is rampant in contemporary marriages.

i suppose the easy answer to these issues is that humanity is depraved. the moment Adam fell in the garden, all was corrupted and humans would be marked with an inability to recognize and follow the model of love that seems to be so blatantly presented to us in Scripture.

but then i’m not one for easy answers. depravity may play a part, but i think the real reason we fail at and are confused by love is that we’re so enamored with the idea of love. we’re built for love and built to find someone that ‘completes us’ (as cliche as that is). without that other person there will always be that longing. and so we seek that out in anyway that we can. whether it’s by bar hopping, or having a group of ‘potentials’, or going on a reality dating show. these attempts will largely prove to be feeble, however, because they lack that which i have found to be the keystone in the arch of love.

and i believe that keystone to be Christ.

without fully relying on Him, i don’t think one can grow to fully rely on another. without trusting in Him, i don’t think one can grow to fully trust another. without completely loving Him, i don’t think one can grow to completely love another.

i’ve seen a lot of friends’ parents get divorced, and have even had a couple of friends of my own get divorced. in each one of the cases they all cite that something just seemed to be missing. i submit that that thing is Christ. now i’m sure many of them would claim to be Christians, but i wonder if they truly had Christ at the center of their relationships, or if He was merely someone they needed (or worse, doubted) when things got tough.

He is sufficient in all things and if we can fully rely on Him as God, then i believe we can fully rely on Him to get us through any situation, including difficulties in marriage or a committed relationship. if only we could look the model we have been given by God of what love truly is, perhaps the family would not be going out of style.