Aug 04 2008
Some Ruminations on Love and Why Colombia - the Fourth
One inescapable fact of the world is that everyone is aware of their need for love. We are all aware of it in a bones-meets-soul deep way and a goosebumps-surface way. The problem is, few people know what it truly is or how to find it. I’m not here going to divulge my secret ways of knowing your one-true-love or any such ridiculous matter. I’m a pilgrim with a very steep learning curve and a very low learning speed. Which is why these are ruminations and not action points.
Rare is the man or woman who knows how to love or even how to be loved.
Case in point, as a youthworker and a teacher, I would witness child after child bare children of their own. If pressed, a few of them - though certainly not all - would admit that they became pregnant so that they would finally have someone who loved them. Since they do not know what love is in the first place, and since the babies don’t quite self-operate, the method is all madness here.
We should not be creating people so that they would love us, we should cultivate love in the home first, and then out of that love should come another child.
I love my child very much, and she loves me very much. But the duty of love should never rest on her shoulders, certainly not at her age.
Good post and very accurate. I also work with kids as a guardian ad litem…all of them have been abused in one way or another. I see many instances when the parents have had those kids to fill a void, it may be love, it may be an effort to become closer with the spouse, either way, its wrong to expect that of a child. The hole can only be filled through Christ. One correction I would reccomend is that we actually pro-create, with God, our children. How awesome is it that God allows our particpation in that process. For me pesonally, I expereinced an entirely different form of love when my babies were born. An epiphany, of what love is between father and daughter, unlike that of the love between my bride and myself. It also made me appreciate even more the sacrifice offered to us through Christ, though I still dont think I can grasp its entirity this side of heaven. Thanks for the words.