On Love.

"Recently I turned 40 and I began to think about those alone years that one person or the other person has in marriage, during old age without their mate. I was thinking how we often forget certain things about a person who has passed, and that I want to remember what I love about my husband if he were to go first. I would remember going to bed together, or afternoon coffees in town and how I loved those times together, and I would remember his laughter and our deep conversations; I would remember his touch and caress, and a hug from him on a hard day. I would prefer to remember and miss my husband in grief rather than not think of him at all - missing him through memories would be worth the pain. The demonstration of love towards one another in marriage is hard to beat, and the fact that people die while others are alive and left to grieve and miss the other person deeply is one of the sorrowful examples of human love. Yet, it is an expression of deep love nonetheless. Love is complex. Love is also one of the best things about being human, and mankind should be more serious in pursuing it. The Bible says love covers a multitude of sins, and that it is greater than faith or hope. I agree." - Michelle Murphy

Relationships with others can be troublesome. This list of troubles is extensive, but includes: being put off or numb to the other person and their actions, holding grudges, hatred or anger against the other person, cheating sexually, being strangers after knowing each other a long time, taking the other person’s commitment or friendship for granted, having vengeful or mean attitudes directed against each another, and negative gossiping about the other person.

There are so many types of friendship, from being acquainted through church, work, or social organizations, to lifelong commitments such as with family and marriage. Romantic relationships and family ties endure more hardship than the average friendship; with endurance also comes the potential for deep love.

The relationship I have with my mother and sister is based on this endurance. The commitment and level of understanding we direct towards one another, along with a general awareness that family is worth the effort of a good relationship, brings about what we desire and yearn for — love. There is nothing to me like the support of a sister, who has kids I am becoming crazy about. There is also nothing to me like the support of a mother. The only thing that trumps either of these two in my life is my marriage. People are meant to thrive with the loving support of one another. Not every marriage or family has that kind of support, and it is shameful, for families and marriages are the building blocks of society and the way that people are designed to thrive. Love is worth enduring hardship to experience. As the band U2 says, “Love is bigger than anything in its way.”

The two greatest commandments are: (1) to love God with all your heart and mind, and (2) to love one another. To have a heart after God is to endeavor to do what is right, respecting His ways; it has an immediate and eternal payoff. To love other people, even as much as we love ourselves, means to look past the shell of strangers and hope they have a good life; it means to say thank you when someone does something for you, and to be a giver to those in need; it means to brainstorm what you can do to help others if you are not already in a position to do so; it means extending forgiveness when someone is oppositional. It means kindness and compassion. Love does not dictate that others respond in likeness; it is a difficult feat to love on those terms.

What about loving life? Some people have a natural disposition to love life, while others are naturally negative or depressed. All who find themselves in depression or negativity will pull out of it, or have the potential to pull out of it with effort. People with severe mental illness have succeeded in setting a goal to get out of bed and accomplish a goal on the harshest of days. And circumstances change. No one should resign their fate to a bad set of circumstances or a bad disposition. Humans are designed to succeed and grow by overcoming challenges. Someone with a natural disposition towards joy has other struggles from time to time. A person who is very smart will struggle with depression and worries, while someone with Down Syndrome will nearly always be smiling. We should learn from those with Down Syndrome that being dealt not all aces does not mean one should not love life. For those with a good disposition, bad times may stick out like a sore thumb, or maybe they are easily forgotten; for those with a depressed disposition, good times can stand out in memories upon intentional recall. Humans will always have to deal with suffering, in one form or another, but loving life is a standard we should seek. After all, there are the mountains and beaches, which do not live as humans and animals do, and we look at them with wonder. Life - breathing, talking, moving, emotional, creative, and experienced through 5 senses, is worth our amazement and deep appreciation. Shakespeare’s “to be or not to be” should be “to love what is or not to love what is” for we have no choice in “being” except to resign to a dead state, but we do have the choice to love life, or deny it for what it is.

Self-love and self-respect are a sign of good health. For how can we love others as we love ourselves, if we cannot even love ourselves? Healthy self-love is the key to life. On the other hand, attention-seeking behaviors in excess, and vain or egocentric views of one’s own value, prohibit one from moving forward. Behaviors to avoid include, but are not limited to: shamelessness, arrogance, envy, entitlement, exploitation and bad boundaries. Many have dark pasts, but no one is limited to their past. With just a mustard-seed of faith you can get started — for even the Phoenix rises from the ashes.

Some people refer to hate as an opposite of love, others war as an opposite to love. War and hate should never be synonymous; we should never go to war for reasons of hatred. We should only be involved in war if it is to preserve life, or virtue, or justice. These are positive affirmations, not negative affirmations. War is not to kill and pillage or rape an enemy, but to sacrifice, save and carve out what is good. War has a history of inciting hatred and unGodliness; we should always be cautious about endorsing war as a nation, and we should remember that hatred should never be a motivator for any action we pursue or endorse in our lives. Hatred is the opposite of love.

1 Corinthians 13, Verse 1-3, says, "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing." Just as knowledge is useless without wisdom, the greatest gifts or actions are useless without love. It may be the universe was created by God by the big bang or some other collusion of great import (most likely), but at our beginnings there was love and God was there seeing the future of us, mankind, and infusing into our core the capacity to love in His mirror image along with the choice or option not to.

Love is not just a fluffy thing for good people. It has met me in the darkness in the depths of despair. By darkness I mean places where Godliness is not present and temptation and fear-mongering thrives. I have met evil face to face with an attitude of consideration and it has either fled or been changed for the better; that is, when I have not caved in. I have experienced love from the least of people where it was not expected.  And I have turned my back on others who did not give up on loving me.

I myself have been resigned to depression and deep trouble at times. During one of these troublesome times, I wrote a poem to my husband on love. I was having difficulty figuring out love at the time. In the last stanza of the poem I say, “I hear God is love, But I don’t understand it myself.” It is true - I have heard that all my life about God. And while I do understand "God is loving", the complexity of "God IS Love" is both bold and complicated.

Lonely in My Own Mind, a poem by Michelle Murphy

I came to be on a cross before my closest friends
More than once.
In general sanity has been my only friend
But I am lonely in my own Mind.

There have been a few things driving me to ruin.
But I am not afraid of the Dark.  I know It.
It has not ruined me.

I have become friends with evil without becoming evil.
But I still fear evil will devour me, and man.
Or make others pay a high price for my head.
Or that I will be hung on the cross again and again.
Never ceasing.

Or that my head will finally be given up.

I was sitting on this mountain the other day, I could
Feel the breeze in the darkness, and rumors 
Of war ending.
It pleased me but not enough.
I am still lonely in my own Mind.

I meet You before the dawn, You
That swirls through places and time.
Who hides in the shadows of my life.
And gives me the peace beyond understanding
When in my presence.

It’s sensual, its erotic, but the music is altogether
Different. I feel understood in a way that passes 
Time. At least Time in the way I’ve come to know It.
And that is complex, as I feel we knew each other
Before the Time we caught up with each other.

I cannot fathom a simple Prayer or wish, that your genuine
Seeming generosity (which makes me tremble) and love
Be real.  Because reality is not my thing.
I don’t trust it. So I don’t trust.

I meet You in my darkest of hours.
I am still lonely in my own Mind.
Except when You are near.
And now I am fearful You will come and go.
Or vanish for eternity.

I cannot dedicate to being either with You or alone.
As You might have. Or being fearful for days on end.
Because even with my best friends on the cross I feel 
Some sense that I am not alone, even if
I am still Lonely in my own Mind.

Either leave me on this cross with my Friends.
Or lay ahold of me so the darkness
Can turn to Day for me and by Night
You are still there.

With you, I am no longer wanton for something.
Nothing.
And I am no longer lonely in my own Mind.

Show me plainly what is real, because 
Reality is not my thing.
I hear God is love,
But I don’t understand it myself.