The Fourth Essay
The two most painful things I have ever experienced in my life are love unreturned and hope lost. I have had much experience with each, and every time I come back to face them in times of trial, I stand lost as though I have never faced them before. Every time panic, then pain, then depression. It is true, I believe, that we are destined to repeat a lesson over and over and over again until we finally learn all there is to learn in it, and so, over and over and over again my heart is wrenched by love unreturned and hope lost.
But each time, even though they are the same they are also a little bit different. Each time it is a little easier to get back up, to pick myself off the floor and look to God to lead me through. I think it is my will that causes me so much pain, so much trouble. The bible says that the heart is deceitful above all things. The world says follow your heart and it will all be ok. Who do you listen to? Who is right? I have followed the world’s standard, and thus, I have followed my heart. Each time I am met with a heart break and pain so deep it leaves me wondering where I went wrong, what I did to cause this. It is only recently that I have been able to step back and realize that were I went wrong was in the very beginning, by following my heart, which, as the bible says, is deceitful above all things. Donald Miller in his book Blue Like Jazz says this about the heart: Because of sin, because I am self-addicted, living in the wreckage of the fall, my body, my heart, and my affections are prone to love things that kill me. Because our hearts are deceitful above all things when we are not focused on the only one who can guide us through the deceits of the heart of fallen man, the things that I seek after with my heart, the women I have sought after in the past, they kill me. Slowly. Don’t get me wrong, these women are not bad women, ok, some of them are, but most of them are good women, women who will one day make wonderful wives for the men that they will eventually marry, but me they kill. Not for any fault in them, but because I am not the one for them.
When I listen to Nazareth’s song Love Hurts, I empathize with it entirely but recognize that it is an incomplete song. Love does hurt at times, love that is not returned to us the way we wanted or hoped hurts like hell, but love, when it is pure, when it is seeking after what God designed for us, then it fills us, completes us, and makes us into better people. It propels us to reach our full potential as human beings. Love is not a curse to be hounded by and long for all our days, it is a blessing passed down upon us day by day through the people we call family, and friends.
There is a need for me to clarify something, when love hurts; it only hurts because of our imperfect showing or ability to receive love. We mix what pure and true love is with a perverted and twisted love that the world says is true. And that is where pain comes into it. As clichéd as it has become to use this when describing love, the greatest definition, the greatest example of love can still be found in the book of Corinthians: Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all tings, endures all things. Love never fails. And that is the beauty of love.
But how strong is this love? There is no greater strength than love as the book of Romans attests as follows: For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. As another great poet put it, love or perish.
Last night while I slept, God convicted me strongly on my views of love; my heart was grieved when I realized how much I had ignored His precepts, and chased after the things of the world. I allowed my idea of love to be perverted, and that perversion is what has caused me so much of my pain in my life. The perversion of love that I am talking about is none other than sin. And as stated earlier and again now because I think it is worth repeating, because of sin, and our self absorbed nature, we are inclined to love the things that kill us. It is only through the Grace of God that we find ourselves out of this downward spiral.
I have spoken a lot on love now; allow me to move on to hope. Hope is a seed, and once planted it grows and grows weather or not we know it. Sometimes our hope though, is looking out for the wrong things, and misplaced so when it is left unfulfilled, or worse yet, if we hope for things that are never going to happen often enough, our hope begins to die, to wither. The heart break of love unreturned is a terrible pain, but it is bearable as long as we have hope to keep even the smallest spark alive in us, but when we no long have hope, when hope dies in us, then there is a pain that is like no other. I have always fancied that when the bible talks of how those who are shut out in the darkness come the end of days will fill their time with wailing and gnashing of teeth, that it is not out of anger or out of a physical pain, but because then, then they will know that all hope truly is lost.
Hope I believe is tied directly into love, with out hope, we cannot love, but inversely, without love, we can not hope. Have you ever met someone who is without hope? It is a truly heart wrenching experience, they no longer feel that they are worthy of love, and so they can not see, nor except the love of others. I know this road well; it is one I walk down now. I have at some point in my life, lost all hope of ever being loved. I broke down, became numb, and lived with out hope. I could still be kind to my friends, and put on a face that said love to them, but there was no love in me, just empty pain that few of them saw. Living with out hope is not living at all. There is no life in a person with out hope.
Recently though, something changed in me. I was an emotional wreak the past few days, trying hard not to let anyone see, the self doubt, self anger, and disgust that was flowing through me like a tsunami wave consumes a small coastal village. I think I failed. One night, after feverish and nightmarish dreams, I woke up and prayed. I begged God to forgive me, asked Him to hold me in this time of pain, and asked Him to give me hope.
The next morning I woke up, I was sick, really sick. I thought I was having a heart attack. Scary moment. I prayed, and hard, then went to the ships equivalent of a hospital and had an EKG, my heart is ok. Thank God. But it happened again, and I went back, praying the whole time, and again all was ok. Then the doctor looking at me took pity on me, and sent me to my rack for the day. God opened the doors for me to rest and trust Him, to hope.
I feel hope inside of me again. God dug deep inside of me and rid me of my lack of faith, my lack of hope, and planted a brand new seed of hope inside of me. It’s all shinny and new. I like new. This hope inside of me has already awakened the long dormant love inside of me. I still maintain that the two most painful things I have ever experienced in my life are love unreturned and hope lost, but I have hope again, and I until I had hope again, I was too blind to see that my friends never not loved me, the loved me all along. My love was never unreturned; it was given to me in a way I was not willing or prepared to meet.
But each time, even though they are the same they are also a little bit different. Each time it is a little easier to get back up, to pick myself off the floor and look to God to lead me through. I think it is my will that causes me so much pain, so much trouble. The bible says that the heart is deceitful above all things. The world says follow your heart and it will all be ok. Who do you listen to? Who is right? I have followed the world’s standard, and thus, I have followed my heart. Each time I am met with a heart break and pain so deep it leaves me wondering where I went wrong, what I did to cause this. It is only recently that I have been able to step back and realize that were I went wrong was in the very beginning, by following my heart, which, as the bible says, is deceitful above all things. Donald Miller in his book Blue Like Jazz says this about the heart: Because of sin, because I am self-addicted, living in the wreckage of the fall, my body, my heart, and my affections are prone to love things that kill me. Because our hearts are deceitful above all things when we are not focused on the only one who can guide us through the deceits of the heart of fallen man, the things that I seek after with my heart, the women I have sought after in the past, they kill me. Slowly. Don’t get me wrong, these women are not bad women, ok, some of them are, but most of them are good women, women who will one day make wonderful wives for the men that they will eventually marry, but me they kill. Not for any fault in them, but because I am not the one for them.
When I listen to Nazareth’s song Love Hurts, I empathize with it entirely but recognize that it is an incomplete song. Love does hurt at times, love that is not returned to us the way we wanted or hoped hurts like hell, but love, when it is pure, when it is seeking after what God designed for us, then it fills us, completes us, and makes us into better people. It propels us to reach our full potential as human beings. Love is not a curse to be hounded by and long for all our days, it is a blessing passed down upon us day by day through the people we call family, and friends.
There is a need for me to clarify something, when love hurts; it only hurts because of our imperfect showing or ability to receive love. We mix what pure and true love is with a perverted and twisted love that the world says is true. And that is where pain comes into it. As clichéd as it has become to use this when describing love, the greatest definition, the greatest example of love can still be found in the book of Corinthians: Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all tings, endures all things. Love never fails. And that is the beauty of love.
But how strong is this love? There is no greater strength than love as the book of Romans attests as follows: For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. As another great poet put it, love or perish.
Last night while I slept, God convicted me strongly on my views of love; my heart was grieved when I realized how much I had ignored His precepts, and chased after the things of the world. I allowed my idea of love to be perverted, and that perversion is what has caused me so much of my pain in my life. The perversion of love that I am talking about is none other than sin. And as stated earlier and again now because I think it is worth repeating, because of sin, and our self absorbed nature, we are inclined to love the things that kill us. It is only through the Grace of God that we find ourselves out of this downward spiral.
I have spoken a lot on love now; allow me to move on to hope. Hope is a seed, and once planted it grows and grows weather or not we know it. Sometimes our hope though, is looking out for the wrong things, and misplaced so when it is left unfulfilled, or worse yet, if we hope for things that are never going to happen often enough, our hope begins to die, to wither. The heart break of love unreturned is a terrible pain, but it is bearable as long as we have hope to keep even the smallest spark alive in us, but when we no long have hope, when hope dies in us, then there is a pain that is like no other. I have always fancied that when the bible talks of how those who are shut out in the darkness come the end of days will fill their time with wailing and gnashing of teeth, that it is not out of anger or out of a physical pain, but because then, then they will know that all hope truly is lost.
Hope I believe is tied directly into love, with out hope, we cannot love, but inversely, without love, we can not hope. Have you ever met someone who is without hope? It is a truly heart wrenching experience, they no longer feel that they are worthy of love, and so they can not see, nor except the love of others. I know this road well; it is one I walk down now. I have at some point in my life, lost all hope of ever being loved. I broke down, became numb, and lived with out hope. I could still be kind to my friends, and put on a face that said love to them, but there was no love in me, just empty pain that few of them saw. Living with out hope is not living at all. There is no life in a person with out hope.
Recently though, something changed in me. I was an emotional wreak the past few days, trying hard not to let anyone see, the self doubt, self anger, and disgust that was flowing through me like a tsunami wave consumes a small coastal village. I think I failed. One night, after feverish and nightmarish dreams, I woke up and prayed. I begged God to forgive me, asked Him to hold me in this time of pain, and asked Him to give me hope.
The next morning I woke up, I was sick, really sick. I thought I was having a heart attack. Scary moment. I prayed, and hard, then went to the ships equivalent of a hospital and had an EKG, my heart is ok. Thank God. But it happened again, and I went back, praying the whole time, and again all was ok. Then the doctor looking at me took pity on me, and sent me to my rack for the day. God opened the doors for me to rest and trust Him, to hope.
I feel hope inside of me again. God dug deep inside of me and rid me of my lack of faith, my lack of hope, and planted a brand new seed of hope inside of me. It’s all shinny and new. I like new. This hope inside of me has already awakened the long dormant love inside of me. I still maintain that the two most painful things I have ever experienced in my life are love unreturned and hope lost, but I have hope again, and I until I had hope again, I was too blind to see that my friends never not loved me, the loved me all along. My love was never unreturned; it was given to me in a way I was not willing or prepared to meet.