Love is a choice. Or, is it?

A facebook comment exchange made me think. The exchange started with a status claiming that love is a choice and not a feeling.

What does it mean to "choose" to love?

There was a time that I believed (or tried to believe) that was true. I'd preach it. I'd say it. But, in all honesty I could never truly live it.

So, what does it mean to choose to love?

I guess it means to DO something. Yeah, it must be it, because the other overused statement is: love is an action.

So, if you do something "right" for someone it means you love them. Granted, if you do that, you most certainly do not hate them, but does that really qualify as love? Can you do something "loving" without really loving them?

Let me copy a section of those comments I mentioned above:

I am not even remotely attracted to the homeless stinking guy with no teeth, but I know God loves him and so do I. It's my choice! I don't always "feel love" toward my dogs/kids/husband/family members/neighbors/friends/and so on, but I choose to LOVE them anyway. If it was a feeling I would have walked out some relationships long time ago. I commit myself to love them all everyday. People attach the word love to what they see on TV, romance novels, and country songs. :) The feeling that makes me "feel in love" is not love. But love is a verb that require action, it's hard work, and should not be held back. Peace out.

I think I actually started loving more when I started not looking at love as a choice. It has freed me to love. Bottom line is I don't think I choose to love. I choose not to judge. I started (still imperfectly) loving when I stopped religiously judging everybody. I can love the homeless stinky and toothless guy because I don't see his "stinkiness" and toothlessness anymore. I see him as a person, with just as much value as me. That I do choose. And that frees me to love. And even feeling it!

If I still feel a repulsion and just suck it up, helping him is still a good thing - absolutely - but is it really love? Personally, if I know people do things for me out of duty (because in the end, that's what it is), because they had to suck it up, or because it was their religious act.. well, I'd rather not be "loved".

So, again.. Is it really a sign of love for you to white knuckle it and do what's "right" even though nothing in you wants to? Which in the end is something relatively easy to do when we're talking about the homeless person with whom you have no relationship whatsoever. But when you are in a deeper relationship with someone, to be on the receiving end of "duty" is not even remotely comparable to truly know that someone "feels love" about/for you.

Obviously I don't have all the answers and these are very random thoughts.. but to stay true to my intention to blog more, I decided to write them down anyway..

Peace.

Back. Hopefully for some time.

So many things have changed in the last few years. In the last year, even.

But, how to put in writing something that takes shape inside of you, that emerges from, and forms out of a series of emotions and experiences on which you cannot put your finger, really.

I am most definitely not where I thought I'd be by now. I imagined my life different. Or maybe not. I imagined it like this but I thought I'd like it, and I found out I really don't.

So many things I've shed, because of that. Things that I had piled up on me so much that I had forgotten that down deep under those things there was a person. I think that person is still alive. Maybe not quite kicking, but it will get there, sooner or later.

In the meantime I've found that I like this new old me. That I couldn't care less what other people think of me and of how I should be. That I have a peace I didn't have when I was doing the right and expected things. That I love my kids more. That I am free of impositions.

I also found others walking down the same street with me.

Some have been long time companions, some are surprising recent encounters. And still it feels like they were always walking by me. Love it!

Well, I'd better stop rambling...

I had been thinking about resuming blogging and just didn't want to postpone one more time. That is why I just posted an old draft (inspired by what, I don't know) and decided to write a couple of non-sensical lines just because.

nat

(I think it's also because my surprising recent encounter asked me today what I like to do.. I had to think about it.. and I remembered I do like to write, and to write on my blog.. so, there you go)

Draft

My feet are on solid ground but there is sometimes darkness all around me. The darkness grows, it constricts, it restricts and I can't move or remove myself from the darkness. Suddenly a slice of light cuts through and I am able to move but then the light is gone. My feet, however, remain on solid ground and I wait. Other lights come and call to me. Some of them are bad. Some of them are good, but I cannot follow them because I know they would lead me down a path that isn't for me. It isn't me.

I don't know how I know this but I do so I stay on the solid ground in the darkness waiting for the light of me to come and call me out.

My boy.

I look at my disobedient child's relationship with me and I think I understand a little bit how God looks at us.

My little 5 year old boy has made an art out of disobedience. He needs to be "reminded" over and over and over again not to do certain things and he keeps doing them. I got so aggravated at him today that I yelled at him telling him how unlikable he gets when he behaves like he does.

And he does! Man, he can so get on my nerves, and his sister's, too!

And still. I LOVE him. I love him so very much. I look at him and I just love him.

I hear that love is an action, and I'm sure that it is a lot of times. I hear that it is something you have to "work" on, and "they" are probably right.

BUT.

But, I don't need to work on my love for my children. It's there. It never goes away. It's an ever present.. feeling. Yep, a feeling. I didn't need to get to know them to love them, to feel love towards them. I didn't need to get into self-help christian (or non christian) books, to know how to love them. I just do.

And I am reminded of that verse where Jesus talks about parents and children...

"If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"

(Matthew 7:11, NIV)

God, I guess, loves me just like I love my kids (and more!)

Even when I disobey him over and over and over again.

It sure is a comforting thought. For me, at least.

Be blessed.

The tree.

How good is good if God never intended for us to know it?

If God was chocolate

If God was chocolate

(Inspired by - "A JOKE A FRIEND TOLD."

Scriptural References: (Romans 8:31, Is. 55:8, Matt. 6:25-34))

Lyrics:

I can feel Your presence in the summer breeze / I can see the distance between You and me / I can catch your fragrance from an April rose / Sure can hear your rhythms when the thunder rolls / But I can’t taste You; don’t think I’m s’posed to / But what would people do / /

Chorus: If God was chocolate; everyone loves chocolate / Everyone would want Him, want Him all the time / You can almost taste it; every godly visit, a party for the spirit, body, soul and mind / If God was chocolate – chocolate - chocolate / Mm-mm – chocolate – chocolate - chocolate //

Pray for an end to anger, you get a Hershey’s kiss / For each good deed a Snickers, I could get used to this / Pray they stop the fighting in the Middle East / and the battleground starts changing / to a chocolate fondue feast / The whole world over we’d discover a whole new hunger //

Chocolate - chocolate Chocolate - chocolate / Can almost taste You / but I think it all through / and I think it’s also true that God is broccoli, asparagus and herb tea / all that stuff that’s good for me that may not taste divine / But it makes a good start at building me a strong heart. So if you eat your broccoli / and you drink your herbal tea, finish your supper and you will see. You will see how it can be that // Chorus

God the revealer

All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

Philippians 3:15