little giving king.

To give is to loosen your heart from itself enough to love unmistakably. Forever a war will wage within my chest.  A native land will always be at stake.  Advances will be made and little won battles will convince me that peace is near and the war won, but I will learn that then, too, I must loosen my grip on my own heart and selfish desire.  The war is no less than my heart able to love freely in response to Christ's love allowed to vanquish all selfishly rooted motive smeared ugly by sin and mired in desire.

You see, to give from a place of charity in my heart as a means of merely being charitable and nice is a short-sighted advance in the war of my heart.  The problem is in my every attempt to be good, in every good try to really care for those close to me.  Sooner or later, most often sooner, my grip around my heart will tighten, my love will flatten, my words grow coarser and I will set alone as king of nothing really, just my little demanding heart. If the victory over our selfish hearts lies in love, then we must be givers rather than takers.  Give more than you demand receipt and you will love expertly - but, the caveat to be crossed is giving and loving without measure.  And that can only happen in our hearts, in our families, marriages and varying relationships, when our hearts have been pierced with a Love forever.  In Christ alone do our hearts both die and live, rightfully find end and beautifully are resurrected.

When I became a father, love swelled uncontrollably within the walls of my heart, pushing the limits of possession and responsibility. I felt for someone I didn't yet know but named. Yet quickly, I discovered how selfish my heart truly was.  My schedule was often disrupted for these beautiful little lives that were just so needy and dependent.  For the first time, I felt the regression of love in my selfish frustration as a parent.  And again, I see selfishness in my choosing to limit love in marriage.  It sounds awful, but it's honest.  I married an amazing woman just a handful of months ago, and again, I'm realizing just how selfish I can be.  There's the ebb and flow I alone allow, the back and forth of giving and taking in the form of love and selfishness.  I am one of five in our family and I fight when they want losing a bit more control of how and when life happens. I. Me. I demand for my way, justifying rudeness and trouncing too hard through beautifully blooming love. All in the quest of satisfying me.

Love is patient, love is kind . . . love is Christ.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

In life as we move in and out of conversations brushing shoulders with others regular to our day and in the intimate circle of family and marriage, the act of giving is holy, set apart from the speed of battling with our hearts, our hands clinching for self-satisfaction.  Let us quiet our efforts, gain victory through Christ and only then, love well.

(image: brianbatista.com)

the glow beyond then.

Few days I go back, deep into the abyss where those days hold the stillness of a mausoleum, memories cataloged beauty and yesterday.

When I do revisit those days, I find the most perplexing piece of my life lived.  Like a garden pushed up through soil holding death and pieces of what once was, I only gaze upon goodness flowering death and disappointment, a sure evidence of God’s immeasurable grace.

And soon, another evidence of good grace stands ready to fill our lives raising us from four journeying hearts to five. I can’t help but realize God foreknew of the goodness to come, all seen now and much more far into tomorrow.  Even in the darkest days following my first wife’s death, the horizon glowed with hope and passage to promise.  Little felt sturdy under our feet and the present day then seemed to stretch longer than my resolve.  Still the horizon glowed in contrast to the faded hues of then and whispered invite and rest.  When we shuffled lost and weak stepped and she meandered through life sure but curiously wondering of beyond, he knew.

Into the new horizon, the new day, hope swallowed death in a momentary microcosm of eternity arriving as always echoed.  Only weeks away from the light of new day warming our faces, we couldn’t be more ready to enter in.

Let me be lovingly clear, she’s not the horizon, nor the salvation; she’s the evidence of his resolved grace.  And grace continues to be the most formative teacher shaping life beautiful behind and warm joy ahead.  God doesn’t keep score or measure fair of all good and bad in our lives somehow having to managing balance.  Grace invades where it’s not welcomed, grabs our hand and leads us through.

The new day pushing in requires a new me – the days after yesterday brought me here.  Through those grief wrenched days following death, I learned to be a different man who sweats the same, yet talks with a heart hallowed, then filled again.  Grace primed me in my darkest to stand, to love and belong again.  Death fits as a defining memory behind and little more than a looming reality somewhere ahead, while life rushes deeper and freer closer to the feet of God.

And so life independent must swing to life together, merging messy, lines blurred into a new color of two now together.  Much of my life has been a strong lean into grace and furious falling forward each day.  The approach to each day fixed into a rhythm of not focusing so much on how we made it as a family so long as we did make it, but life merging from the four of us to the five of us demands more stability and intentionality, not mere happenstance and butterflies.  My love must be ready for more than just affectionate high fives and romantic date nights.  After all, she is someone my heart will be tied to and my feet will find cadence with until there's little distinction.

I’m learning how to practice love that cuts through me – my fears, my circumstance, my past, my worries, my mistakes, my deficiencies – for sake of belonging to her and us and now and promise not always seen.

[II Cor 4:16-18]

what makes love live.

“Well, do you love her?”   Quiet. Blank stare. Long.

His look part anger, part remembering, part brokenness.  I had no wise words to offer greater than the realization settling back into his world.  Something blocked it all, what he once loved so much in his own way, her.  Little things had been building.  Arguments kept, offenses recorded in their minds, every identified wrong used as weapons to cut.  They were both injured and now insecure, quick to cut and easily run.  What brought them back each time?  Love and all that had been invested.  Life together.  Imperfect indeed and sometimes twisted, but not easily dying either.  And there he sat in love.

This could be anyone’s story.  It is one, but also the story of many.

Relationships crumble when scores are kept left to be settled one day, lurking in every wrong and hurt and offense.  What once was so beautiful and full and giving, now a pit sinking and a hole keeping.  Two people convinced things have irreparably changed live in a dead love.

Deepening relationships meaningful and lasting are complicated always.  Two individuals whose lives are colliding and merging in hopes of achieving the greatest sense of belonging and being hinges on giving.  Giving stands in direct contrast to getting.  One cannot get love no matter how persistent the attempt and/or pursuit.  You can’t make someone love you lastingly.  They choose.  You choose.  That’s how love works.  Just because you buy her flowers today does not mean she’ll love you tomorrow, or even later that evening.  She will undoubtedly enjoy the flowers, attention, effort and maybe even creative detail, but that’s like, not love.  Too many of us buy flowers but do not give love.  There’s a bit of truth and good perception to the argument that Valentine’s day is merely a consumer driven industry, a golden opportunity for businesses to capitalize on people trying to buy love, but only the smallest bit of truth and good perception.  The ones holding tight fisted and defiantly to this argument defending their lack of romantic effort on this day to a somehow believed track record of loving their wives in the everyday typically seems to boil down to tightening a screw here and there, taking out the trash most nights, keeping a good roof overhead and so on.

Love is about more than doing.  It is giving in every chance and never noticing who gave last.  Love is blind in this regard.  It has to be.  The moment you start keeping notice and record of who gave last, your hand empties held out waiting to receive.  Love withers.  Wilting in the waiting.

Some of the best advice I ever did receive in regard to relationships succeeding, Be quick to forgive, and forget.  Hurts are sticky and offenses are clingy.  Allow them room in your heart and love will be strangled to a death.  Forgiveness is what makes love live.

Forgiveness is typically defined as the process of concluding resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offense, difference or mistake, or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution.

Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.  Love doesn't strut, doesn't have a swelled head, doesn't force itself on others, isn't always "me first," doesn't fly off the handle, doesn't keep score of the sins of others, doesn't revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end.  Love never dies.  (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, The Message)