Despite knowing nothing about what love means, I find myself inextricably tied to it. I cannot live life without loving people. That is at any point in time there has to be someone that I love, that I care about. Lucky for me, I have a great family to both love and from which to receive the same, if not more. Furthermore, I have God, not that we loved him, but that he loved us. But the love I speak of is not mere love among family, nor is it platonic, nor is it Godly. As much as I hate to admit, it is often of a romantic nature.
I need someone to love, to care about, to pour my life into. I want to protect her, to comfort her, to see her smile, make her laugh, share her pain, and to simply hold her hand through life. I want to make sure that she knows that she'll always have someone to complain to, that when the world hates her I will love her, that in times when I fail God will not. To love a girl and submit to one another in perfect love, the kind of love that drives out fear. That type of love! That is what I want. The sad part is that I find myself falling in love with this image I have.
I love the concept of being in love. I love the idea of loving someone, the feeling of being loved back. I love having a person to share life with and to always be around. But this concept has long evolved from its original pure form... it has long lost all semblance of love. It almost seems that I treat having a love as more important than who that love is. It's as if all I need is to have love and that the direction of the love is irrelevant. Has the concept of love replaced the object that I am to love?
I have fallen in love with ministry and lost sight of why I'm doing it. I have fallen in love with leading bible studies, with memorizing scripture, with reading the Bible. That love has replaced the person that I'm doing it all for. I have fallen in love with knowledge and not with knowing God.
No, this is not love. It can't be. Love is about the person, not the motions we go through. Whether it is with her or with God, I will not fall in love with love itself. I refuse. Perhaps one day, when I finally break this addiction, I'll stop looking for substitutes and go for the real thing.
