June 19, 2006

• Love Profound -

  
  

  Isn't it interesting how you come to a place where you are mostly alone, and then you learn about love? Well, okay, maybe that's just me.

  
  

  I had this conversation with Tucker a couple months ago about a celtic knot pattern I admire. We were talking about love and how big and deep is love. When does love end? And I told him that I believe that love never ends. It changes, but it never ends, not if it's real.  He thought that was a good answer, but he said, "If you hurt enough, doesn't that make the love go away?"

  
  

  This afternoon I had a conversation with my best friend about pain.  In my usual melodramatic way, I wished to share in the pain.   And of course, MBF responded that no way could that kind of pain be shared or wished upon someone you care about. 

  
  

  I don't know, I think if I were God, (and here's another reason for everyone to be glad I'm NOT) I think that if two people chose to join their hearts in my realm, I'd grant them that option, to share the pain as well as the joy.   I remember a story I read once about C S Lewis and his wife Joy Davidman.  At the time they married, she had already been diagnosed with the cancer that took her life.  Her pain grew so pronounced that she could not rest and he was going insane with grief from watching her suffer.  He prayed and experienced an excruciating pain in his own body, but her pain was eased.

  
  

  Lewis wrote much about physical, emotional, and spiritual pain and if I hadn't already packed my books, I could look up a dozen excellent quotes, but I googled this one and it fits my thought:

  
  

  
  

  Bridge-players tell me that there must be some money on the game, "or else people won't take it seriously."  Apparently, it's like that.  Your bid, for God or no, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity, will not be serious if nothing is staked on it.  And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high; until you find that you are playing it not for counters or sixpences but for every penny you have in the world.  Nothing less will shake a man, or at any rate a man like me, out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs.  He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses.  Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.

  
  

   I have learned a few things about myself and pain and love over the past 43 years.  In the first place, I have a capacity to endure a lot of pain.  I have degenerative arthritis in my lower back, although thank God, I have not been diminished in my ability to walk.  I live with pain. 

  
  

  It shocked me after my car accident two years ago when the ER doc asked me how much pain medication I was already taking.  "not any" - she couldn't believe that a person with the damage she saw on those x-rays wasn't taking anything.  So she probed several more times and then ordered a blood test.  She offered me a prescription.  But I never had it filled. 

  
  

  I don't say this because I hope that anyone will think me admirable.  Mostly I have a severe aversion to drugs and a determination to avoid any chance of becoming dependent upon pain meds.  But let it be someone I care about who's in pain?  My attitude shifts.  It's okay to discount my pain, but not the pain of someone I care about.  I want them to have the latest medication, the softest cushion, the most perfectly contoured heating pad ...

  
  

  And more than anything, I want the privilege of sharing.  Let me carry a little of that in my heart, in my mind, in my body.  Let me share.  I won't accuse God in this matter, I'm sure she knows what she's doing,  But if it were me, I'd grant that desire.  I believe that friendship and love may be born in pleasure but they grow in adversity and pain. 

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Our love knows no limits
  And our love knows no bounds
  Hear it ring through the hills and canyons
  Isn't love profound.
  
  It shows us the life that we know we can live
  It teaches us how to forget and forgive
  It gives us the harvest from sweet mercy fields
  It rescues, it nurtures, it calms and it heals.
  
  'Cause our love knows no limits
  And our love knows no bounds
  Oh, it confounds the wisest of sages
  Isn't love profound.
  
  Oh, it sings when we're weary from so many tears
  And rocking us gently it cradles our fears
  In those times when we feel like we've come to our end
  It gives us the strength to start over again.
  
  "Cause our love knows no limits
  And our love knows no bounds
  It will stand even tried by fire
  Isn't love profound.
  
  Our love knows no limits
  And our love knows no bounds
  Hear it ring through the hills and canyons
  Isn't love profound...

  
  

  Lyric to "Love Profound" from Susan Ashton's A Distant Call

  
  

   

  
  

   

  • 9:25 pm
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