Love is made complete among us

My mom just called. The cat is sick. We all hate the cat, the cat drives us crazy. So why am I crying? Because as crazy as she drives us, I love her. She has diabetes. She now becomes even more high maintanance and she might have to be put to sleep. Blast, and just like that I am crying and my mom just keeps talking about this that and the other thing, she finally stops and realizes I am crying and she is like "why are you crying?" and I am like, the cat, and she acts all surprised.

See all practicality says I should hate the cat. When she was a kitten and a young cat she used to chase me around and bite me. She hated to be held. She only would show affection to be fed. She would run off. She at times turned the house into her litter box. She is ornery. She is loosing weight and her hair and throwing up. She is, unloveable. Something though compels me to love her. To cry at the thought of losing her, the thought of her suffering.

It is raining outside and I think of a day not so long ago, running into the grocery store through the rain with the Man I love. If you ask me what it is that makes me love him, I could tell you, but in the same way, last night he said of his love toward me, "it is like trying to describe the sunset, music." It is true. After pondering awhile I decided to fall back on this metaphor, partly mine, partly stolen.

The way I knew he was the one was the same way you know you are home. You just know. Your home might be broken in places, the roof might leak. Your toilet handle might need a jiggle and you may never find the remote to the TV but there is no where more perfect. When you are away from it it is all you think about going back to. It is where you want to rest your head at the end of a long day. It is the culmination of all your hoping and all your dreams.

That is how it is with Phil. When I talk to him it is like I know that is where I belong. It is, above all things, impractical to love. It would be simpler, after all, to go on caring for just myself, to not spend effort and time building something new. I struggle as I see myself as the broken home and think I shall not ever be a place that anyone else would want to make their abode. I think that but then I realize, as I am at home with him, he is at home with me. That is how it will be, very likely, forever.

Sometimes we choose to love, but it is usually selfish. Sometimes love chooses us. Real love isn't rooted in perfection, real love is like coming home. Sometimes I feel like the cat, broken and unlovable. I realize though in our own ways we are all capable of being loved, even when it makes no sense. Why did God love me enough to send his son? Why did he love me enough to bless me with such a great man of God? Why will he someday welcome me, me of all people, into his arms and into the home he has prepared for me?

Love.


I will search all my life and never really fully understand it.


Romans 8:38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1 john 4:15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. 16And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 17In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him.