Loves Lessons

So for the past three weeks or so, I’ve been doing two things before I go to sleep that are new. First, I’ve been praying again. Pretty standard fare, just typical catholic prayers, and a conversation with whatever or whoever is holding this crazy universe together. I pray for us, that we make it through this dry time financially. I pray for your health and strength like I do for my own. I pray for the grace to forgive my mom. I pray for our whole family that they all flourish in the way they want to. I pray for our future, that it’s lighter. I pray for strength and endurance for myself along with the self discipline to make the best choices I can for my health and growth. And then I just listened. I opened my mind and heart and let it drift. However, it drifts. Inevitably it brings me to item number two

The second thing I’ve been doing is reflecting on the nature of love so that I can easier recognize it and give it, even in a bedridden state.

And even before I started this practice all the way from when we first started talking, you have been, by and far, the most profound teacher when it comes to love. But for the past few nights, I’ve been trying to work out what it is exactly that I’ve been learning about love from you over the past two or three years since by accident. Here’s what I’ve learned:

I’ve learned that love is not a thing. It’s not something that you pick and choose and it’s not something that you apply situationally. It’s either there or it  is not. It’s everything or it’s nothing. In my prayers, I thank God that for us, love is everything. So that’s the number one thing that I’ve learned.

I’ve also learned from your love that it manifests itself in action. Not big earth, shaking moments of action but daily representation by just showing up and being there. Your love on our best day in California is the same love that I’ve experienced on our hardest day since my accident. It’s authentic, and ever present. It’s exactly what our vows were to each other, and it binds those vows between us.

I can’t define love, but I know a few things about it. Things that I never knew before I met you. But the biggest thing that I’ve learned from you about the nature of love is that it is stronger and longer lasting than any challenge that it faces. I know this to my core. And I know this to my core because of you being with me during imp, possibly desperate times just the same as you stood beside me during our easiest and best of times. If nothing has disintegrated the love between us yet, nothing ever will.

PS: it’s the craziest thing… the more I contemplate the nature of love, the easier I find it is to pray. Perhaps that speaks to the divinity of love itself. The more I understand it through looking at your gift of it, the more I’m convinced that it’s a cyclical language that speaks past this life and to matters beyond our comprehension.

Or maybe I’m just a fool.