Lent, Day 1

Love....

It doesn't make sense.

I traded all my nothing,

and got Everything.

I wonder what people see when they look at me?

I wonder who people think I am?

do they see someone who has real joy?
do they see someone who has a deep sense of who she is?
do they see a loving daughter and sister?

do they think I am the kind of person whom you could call at 2am if you needed her?
do they see compassion?

do they see Love?

Is what they see what I want to be?

" And the people who love me still ask me,

When are you coming back to town?

And I answer quite frankly,

When they stop building roads,

And all God needs is gravity to hold me down"

"Love slays what we have been that we might become what we were not."

-St. Augustine

I love that particular quote by St.Augustine. Somehow it put to words precisely something that I've always felt and never known how to say.

I think that whenever we love someone or experience being loved, it changes us. Always. Even if just in small ways. Whether its a mother, father, sister, cousin, grandparent, friend, mentor, boyfriend, husband, whoever- everyone whom we love and who loves us changes us.

The experience of love changes the way we love someone or the way we experience love.

Think of your first boyfriend or girlfriend. Then think of when that ended. Did you ever love the same after that? Didn't love seem more dangerous or a little less safe?

Or the first time you really realized the depth or width of your parent's love for you? Or your first experience with selfless love for someone other than family or spouse? These experiences, these moments, these acts and emotions of love- they change us.

The more we experience love- the more we love, we change. We become less what we were the instant before and move into something a little bit more authentic. Something a little bit truer.

Sometimes- we take our experiences of love and let them fester in us. Let them make us bitter or fill us with regret. We take love and we turn into something that we don't want to become.

Hopefully, we realize before too long- that this isn't where love is supposed to take us and we turn ourselves around.

I think the point of St. Augustine's quote and what I have thought about often- is the whole point of love is to let it change you into something better, truer, more into the likeness of Love itself.