choosing to choose ...

a friend and i were chatting about the journey of ‘figuring it out‘ within the context of relationship, and i was reminded of this journal entry from several years ago. (yes, that means i’m cheating, but i think it is relevant right now for many people i know, and bears repeating.)

the beauty of love is “giving someone else a safe place in which to grow.” what greater love than that of God, as outlined in John 1.

1How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is … 11This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another … 16This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers … 18Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 19This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence.

We know that we belong to the truth and our hearts can rest in His presence when our actions are guided by love, by a genuine laying down of our lives. This call to sacrifice ourselves, our identities, is pretty scary … until we remember that we are children of God and that our true identities will only be revealed when He is revealed.

My head is trying to figure out how all this plays into happily-ever-after. In the days of arranged marriages, I’m sure there were many not-so-happy women, but they still chose to love. That’s pretty convicting in today’s society. We get to pick, and we still choose not to love the one’s we have chosen. This just goes to highlight the fact that maybe it’s not about happiness or comfort or even a feeling.

What?!? Love NOT a feeling?!?

Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s about a commitment, a covenant.

We’re blessed that we get to let the feeling of love play a part in our decision. Or maybe it’s a curse, because we so confuse the feeling of love for the calling of love that when the former is gone, we believe the calling has been removed, or wonder if we missed it in the first place. What if the feeling is what is supposed to result from our answer to the calling?

And since we’ve strayed from the days of arranged marriages, how does one now go about choosing? Perhaps the key lies in that word … it is not in the choice, but in the choosing once the choice has been made. You choose to choose to love the person you chose every day and it is, in that, that happiness, comfort, and the feelings of love are found.