The Great Romance

It's a wonderful feeling to know someone is thinking of you. It's inspiring, intoxicating, flattering and comforting to have someone that is so utterly and desperately in love with you that they would do absolutely anything for you. They would leave their home, leave their comfort zone, and sacrifice their own wants and needs for yours. The greatest example of someone loving you is someone that would give their own life to protect yours; selflessly and without a moment's hesitation.

I love that feeling when you're with the one you love and you feel absolutely weak, giddy and transparent. You can be yourself and they love you for it. You don't have to put on a show...you don't have to pretend and you don't have to put your "best foot" forward. They know you for who you are and love you passionately for it.

I have been lucky to have that love in my life. It's been with me through the most terrible and filthy moments in my past, the wonderful and spiritual awakening moments of the present and it will be with me in the exciting and unknown adventure of my future. This love is what fuels me, what guides me and what inspires me to be who I am.

The memories of who I was and all the terrible things I've done are in the past and although consequences will have to be met face to face, they can't hold me back for what great things are coming in my near future.

This love has forgiven my past and even holds me and takes me in regardless of my current failures and mistakes. Amazingly enough...this love will also be there for me for the things I might do in the future as well.

No one wants to ever admitting to making mistakes or being filthy and sinful. I think today people are ignoring the simple fact that we are not holy, not clean, and not in a place to say otherwise! We are sinners. Pure and simple. We have bad thoughts, we say terrible things we act on those thoughts, carrying them out and end up hurting ourselves and those we love. It's only by falling in love like this that we slowly begin to lessen our sinful thoughts, lessen the hurtful words and lessen our painful actions.

Love leads you do some amazing things. And that's the kicker. Love leads. It doesn't force, doesn't cause you to compromise. Lust does these things. Lust brings you to a place of compromise and sinful acts. Lust pushes you in to areas that you originally may not have wanted to be in. Love leads.

This great romance I speak of is a spiritual romance. It's something that can't be explained in words.  Just as loving someone so completely and being loved is difficult to describe, so is this. I think most of us that ever grew up in a church or have ever stepped into a church have heard this verse before:

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16

But there are so many others that speak of this amazing love for us even when we make mistakes and don't live the way we should! Like this one:

"...but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

"But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved—" Ephesians 2:4-5

This is a love unlike any other. It's hard to describe what it feels like to have this kind of love in your life.

I've been chasing after love all of my life it seems. I was never one of those "ew get away from me!  COOTIES!" little boys lol I was a hopeless romantic from day one! The very first crush I ever had was when I was 4 years old. Although I didn't have much experience in love, or in life for that matter, she was my (then) everything and I often talked about her. My mother said she would laugh and was just a tiny bit concerned. She used to say it was odd for someone so young to be so "grown up" when it come to love.

But that's just how I've always been. Always falling for someone, Thinking of them daily...sharing sweet words of love to them. Most of the time I was rejected and avoided. I was not lucky in love...ever. In fact it's odd that someone who has always been so passionate about being in love has had such difficulty with it.  You'd think it would be different.  Nope.  Life isn't always fair. :)

I remember a sweet friend once told me how it seemed odd that I couldn't find the love of my life.  I was in a bad place and had just lost the opportunity with the woman I was in pining for at that time and told her I was so frustrated with it all that I was considering just giving up that I would ever find any real, meaningful love. I had searched for so long and hadn't found anyone who would stay with me or love me for any length of time. They would always just abandon me after a few months, rarely ever speaking to me again for whatever reason.  I told her, "Maybe it's just me.  Maybe I'm doing something or am just not someone who can find love.  I think I'll just give up on it."  She looked at me and said, "Oh Jose.  What a sad thing to say!  You can't give up on love!  You're 99% love!" lol

It's true. I'm kinda' mushy. And it's that, it seems, that causes me to get hurt so much.  Hopeless romantics always seem to be so easily hurt. Kinda' sucks. Even right now...there is someone I'm thinking about, a LOT and the door seems to have been closed even before I had a chance to really give it a try. Sadly, that is not the first time that's happened to me.

However....THIS love...is amazing. It doesn't hold any grudges, doesn't keep score, is patient, kind, thoughtful, does not waver BUT does not allow compromise. It's an amazingly powerful love that cuts through fear, doubt, insecurities, past failures in relationships, all those things that make a relationship between two people challenging sometimes.

God's love for us is like jumping into a hot spring. You feel warm, cleansed, purified and revitalized.  When you come out of it, you're refreshed and renewed. God's love doesn't hold us back, but breathes inspiration and purpose into our lives. It is the single most important relationship we will ever and could ever have.

But I will be the first to admit this; loving one you can't see or touch is a very difficult reality for us.  Part of being in love IS that connection, that affection, that interaction. It's the simple pleasures like waking up next to the one you love and holding onto them and taking those extra few minutes before you wake up in the morning that make being with someone so amazingly intoxicating. How can we EVER hope to know what that feels like with God's love?

I can't explain it to you...nor do I have a "real world" answer for you. All I know is what I've experienced.

So what is it like to be loved by God? Imagine being swept off your feet by the creator of Heaven and Earth. To have him whisper secrets of who you are and what great deeds and plans he has for you while you sleep. Think of what it must feel like to be held by someone who loves you with the utmost intensity and would do absolutely anything to remind you daily of his love for you. He will never leave you, it doesn't matter to him what accomplishments you have, how much money you make, how young you look, how old you look...he is absolutely and deeply in love with who you are and who you will become.

This Spiritual Romance is by far the hardest thing to comprehend sometimes, but it THE most fulfilling love anyone could ever have. That may sound like a challenge...but I don't think anyone of us can compete with God's love. I hope that you, my friends, can understand this love one day and feel it for yourselves.  Have a wonderful day!