They Give Away Their Freedom

Yesterday I was a part of marrying off yet another one of my best friends.  In the course of the last month, I have done so twice.  In the course of three years, I have done so five times.  This past wedding leaves me as one of very few in my band of cohorts to be unwed.  It isn't all bad.  It was bound to happen to one of us this way.  But, nothing really prepares you to be one of the last to be alone.  Having said that, these weddings have given me an even greater chance to evaluate what love is.  To think it over and decide just what a romantic love looks like.

It has been well over a year since my view of love has been shaken to its core.  That simple view I had of love, albeit, in and of itself, romantic...  Was sadly naive.  How obvious that became one night in April of 2008.  But, I have found myself desiring that love once again.  It had taken me quite a while to realize how much I really do miss it...  Even with it's inherent risks.  My absolute favorite quote about love is by C.S. Lewis because he is so pragmatic and so direct about the risks and pitfalls that love brings us into:

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."

To love at all is to be vulnerable.  A greater truth, quite possibly, has never been spoken.  I see couples, from time to time, who say "I love you", but never mean it.  They never mean it because they haven't let that person in to every corridor of their heart.  They haven't invited them in to those corridors and given them free reign to rearrange and criticize.  And, yes, to burn those corridors to the ground if that person so chooses.  To love is to let someone "in" completely.  Not just partially.  Not just on a bit by bit basis.

In our culture "love" is thrown around far too often to describe a feeling.  We "love" that special one when they give us something...  When they treat us a certain way...  When they make us "feel" special.  But, when that feeling fades, we often find ourselves wondering where that love went.  In our culture "love" describes an emotion.  When, in reality, true love is an expression of undying commitment that isn't easily broken by the storms and tidal waves of everyday life.  Love isn't a feeling expressed solely when that one that we love treats us with the kindness and respect we believe we deserve...  It isn't only when they are healthy and wise...  Or when they are rich or famous.  Love, in fact, isn't chosen by us.  In turn, love chooses us.  (Quite often by surprise.)  And when we are chosen, we have the ability to tarry through the times when our loved one isn't nice...  Isn't tactful...  Is sick...  Is misguided...  Has become poor and has lost any status that, perhaps, they once had.  Love, instead, laughs in the face of status and financial security and feelings and emotions.  And, instead, loves the person that they have been given to love, unconditionally just as Christ loves His church.

Yesterday at James and Katie's wedding, the following excerpt from Fredrick Buechner's book "Beyond Words" was read:

"They say they will love, comfort, honor each other to the end of their days. They say they will cherish each other and be faithful to each other always. They say they will do these things not just when they feel like it, but even -- for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health -- when they don’t feel like it at all. In other words, the vows they make could hardly be more extravagant. They give away their freedom. They take on themselves each other’s burdens. They bind their lives together... The question is, what do they get in return?"

Even when they don't feel like it at all...  They make a promise to cherish one another.  To not only, in theory, have love...  But, to express it when, by the world's standards, it is completely undeserved.  It could hardly be more extravagant.  Why?  Because, in doing so, they give up their freedom.  They are no longer their own person...  They are a family.  A family that sticks by one another despite the ups and downs, successes and failures, hopes and fears.  Extravagant...  Not because it is magnificent or glorious to the outward eye...  But, because during those times when their spouse is unlovable...  They find a way to simply, humbly and genuinely love.  And, when we choose to love without cause...  We love extravagantly.  So, what do they get in return for this extravagant and sacrificial love?  Buchner goes on:

"They get each other in return... There will always be the other to talk to, to listen to... There is still someone to get through the night with, to wake into the new day beside. If they have children, they can give them, as well as each other, roots and wings. If they don’t have children, they each become the other’s child…

"They both still have their lives apart as well as a life together. They both still have their separate ways to find. But a marriage made in heaven is one where a man and a woman become more richly themselves together than the chances are either of them could ever have managed to become alone."

They get each other.  A "someone" that will not move away if some better job or new educational opportunity comes their way.  A "someone" who will patiently listen when your stories are boring, depressing, mundane, ridiculous, absurd, negative and longwinded.  A "someone" who you know you'll lay down to each night and a "someone" you know you'll see when you first wake up in the morning.  All the while, building a stronger and stronger foundation together...  One so strong, in fact, that had they attempted to do so alone they would have failed.  They have the ability to become something so much more and so much more beautiful than anything they could have been alone.

This is the epitome of my friends James and Katie.

And, in listening to these words and bringing them close to my heart, I wondered silently as I stood on stage watching Katie beam from ear to ear, if I had ever had someone in whom I was so in love.  And, if I had, what went wrong?  If this is the extravagant love that God wants for His children so much, I wonder why he would take it away.  But, the reality is (and a reality that is rarely mentioned in wedding ceremonies), is that love is a great mystery.  Nobody really knows what true love is.  Even those who think they've got it...  End up realizing just how naive they were once they've been together longer and longer and that love grows deeper and deeper.  So deep, in fact, that they can look back and laugh at what they once thought was the epitome of love.

So, in closing, I covet your prayers.  I ask for them for my four friends (Randy & Tori and James & Katie) as they are embarking on their journeys of marriage.  But, I also, selfishly, ask for prayer as well.  I ask that you pray for me to recognize love when it finds me.  After all human nature is to shy away from the pain in which Lewis speaks...  And, doubly so when it has been levied upon us before.  I ask that you pray that I am able to easily trust and easily love...  As I once did before my heart was broken.  And, perhaps the most selfish of them all, I ask that you pray that she comes into my life quickly.  I so much want to give that love again.

I thank you all for loving me despite all the imperfections and downfalls I have!  I love you all!

"But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love."

--Danny