What is Love?

I struggle. Sometimes I struggle to understand the why to so many questions. Sometimes I find it difficult to comprehend the timeline of my life. Sometimes I feel like a nomad, wandering aimlessly through life, accidently doing something worthwhile but more often than not just biding my time. Biding my life away here on this earth, hoping something amazing will happen to me. That’s where I think the problem lies. I feel like I am hoping, wishing, thinking with very little doing, hiding behind big words and grand ideas.

I sit there watching, observing, as his eyes never stray from her face. Those gray eyes that have seen so many years, her face graced with lines etched in, reminding him of the many, many years ago when they first met. His eyes old and dark glisten with tears as he tries to understand what is going on around him. All he can do is look at her. Sometimes his eyes stray back to the smiling man in the white coat asking him questions, questions he can’t seem to comprehend. He looks back at her, his wife, trying to find something, an answer maybe? She is all he knows, all he can understand right now. She sits there her face calm and gentle, answering the doctors’ questions, hopeful that maybe things can get better? The doctor asks how many years they have been together; she answers beaming with pride, “65 years.” He then asks him. "What’s your name sir?" No response. "Can you tell me what year it is?" He mutters something…maybe something about 1948 or 1945? "Do you know who that is next to you?" His face never turned away from hers and his answer is quick and confident, “my wife.” She smiles, a sad smile as tears now glisten in her eyes. She knows all he knows is who she is but the life they used to live is not the same. Their timeline of life long and full has proven their love is till death do them part. This graceful, little lady is determined to care for her ailing husband with Alzheimer’s; hard as it is as she is older and barely strong or healthy enough to even care for herself.

"Sir, can you draw this pattern?" He looks at his wife confused, she hands him the pen and repeats, “draw this.” He looks at her, his eyes dart quickly at the doctor; reaches for the pen struggling to figure out how to hold it firmly in his hand. He sits there, already forgotten what was asked. The doctor asks, "draw a circle." Nothing. The smiling doctor, seeing how much they love each other asks, "can you write, ‘I love my wife’." To our surprise, this old gentleman with his glistening, aged dark eyes, scrawls in child like penmanship ‘I love my wife.’ His wife beams and reaches for that scrap of paper and holds it like treasure, a glimpse of what once was.

I sit there amazed. I observe what love really is. Not a shallow lust portrayed oh so well in our young society. It’s a journey, a fight not with each other to prove their love but a fight for each other together to stay in love. It seems to be a constant fight to forget the wrongs and remember the right. It’s hopeful but perseveres. It stays together, works together, gives, cares, and shares together. We throw the word ‘love’ around a lot. The only problem is that it’s not just being in love, it’s being love in action.

Through my seemingly aimless wandering in this life, I fortunately come across reminders of a purpose to be love in action to those who I may accidently meet on my little journey of life. Purposely serving, giving, sharing, trying to live a life of love in action. I often fail and sometimes I forget and selfishly I….but thankfully remember.

It is a work of art, step by step, brush stroke by brush stroke the bigger picture slowly but surely comes together.

Though the vision is not clear and tarries, wait for it. 

Finding your purpose: A work in progress

Crowds of faces bustled around her as she, a stranger in a foreign land, tried to stumble through finding her way to what was now her new home. Everything had changed. Everything was new. Why did everything have to be so different? Even the smells and sights were not what she was accustomed to in her old country. No one knew her here, she knew no one.

Had she made the right decision, she thought as she stood in the middle of the crowded market street, colorful stalls of fruits, flowers, and yards of silky cloth wove around the square. Yes, she could never doubt that day when she stood at the cross roads a few miles out from Moab but miles away from Judah. A day when she clung so desperately, grasping, dearly hanging onto a belief, a hope. Tied to her past yet holding onto a possibility of a future, she declared to Naomi, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”* She spoke with such devotion and desperate hope to her mother-in-law, an old lady who had lost her own husband and two sons in a foreign land of Moab and now headed back to her home of Judah with resolute sadness and not much more.

Ruth was a young woman whose past had intertwined her to this immigrant Jewish family. Now, with her husband, Naomi’s son dead; she had nothing. Not a nickel to her name. All she had was what made her who she was, her decision, her desperate hope in a future, and a belief in a new faith to find a purpose for her seemingly miserable life.

As she set towards her new home, she determined in her heart to win favor in God’s eyes. Her resolution on this new day led her to happen across God’s plan and purpose for her life. Her declaration of faith made a way for God to step into her work in progress and guide her into a new destiny.

It may seem to be a simpleton’s desperate hope, a futile belief in the unknown, the unseen but one decision made a destiny changing, life altering, generational impact.

You may be at the crossroads of life, or in the middle of something completely new, filled with so much change in your life. No matter what, God knows you are a work in progress and His purpose for you is far more than you could ever imagine. All it takes is faith to make a monumental life changing decision as you step forward.  It also requires a desperate hope and the humility to cling dearly onto a belief in Someone greater. His grace is more than enough. 

*(Ruth 1:16-17)

Patchwork Pieces

A journey through seasons of life can appear like patchwork pieces of a quilt. We only see the present, look back at things in hindsight, and try to look beyond trying to catch a glimpse of the future. A road trip through my life right now would be journeying through rolling hills, flat green and sometimes dry land on my way to another month of learning the art of practicing medicine. 

Driving through rural areas I see contrasts of color against blue skies, green grass, and sometimes the ripples of a lake. I love the changing colors of the trees in Autumn, how the colors of fire, wood, oceans, grass, sunsets, and sunrises all mix together as a tree conserves its life and releases its leaves. 

On the inside the production of chlorophyll slows down. This substance of the tree makes trees green in the spring and summer and it also represents growth. As it slows down it leaves carotenoids and anthocyanin unmasked revealing the many different hues of golden oranges and reds and bronze. The timing of change is different for each species of tree yet winter is always a certainty. 

The tender green leaves would die in the freezing cold weather so the tree has to toughen up to preserve its life in order to reawaken in the spring. Stems, twigs, and buds are equipped to face the wintry conditions unlike the leaves. Still, these fallen leaves provide nutrition for the ecosystem below. Though winter is the inevitable each tree has to face, so is the hope of each coming Spring. 

From the inside out our lives reveal the continual change and growth that we face in this journey through seasons of life. Just like that quilt of patchwork pieces, we put together the pieces of each season. It's never the same leaf, fruit, or flower that is visible and the seasons that come vary. Yet, it's the same breathe of life flowing, threading through our veins. 

Through all these seasons we choose daily to trust, to love, to care, to win, to succeed, to choose life or to choose death. This is what makes each patchwork piece so unique.

The phrases below are put together in patchwork pieces just as our lives simply seem to be pieces of a much grander puzzle. What we often see and our view of life is myopic. Things may not be as you want them to be but with God all things work together for good and for His glory. We can trust in the life He gave flowing in and through us. We can place our faith in knowing we are trees planted by streams of living water. We can also revel in the knowledge that not only the fruit we bear brings nourishment and hope to others but so do the leaves that fall revealing beauty from our growth and change. 

There is a season for everything under the sun. A season to learn, to grow, to enjoy, to plant, to harvest, to mourn, to laugh, to search, to find, to love, a time for war and a time for peace.* Most importantly I hope we go through a season of seeing and coming to understand the greatness of God's love. Our lives gain a greater meaning and our eyes are open to a greater dimension and depth because of God's love. Hopefully this season gives you the much needed life to recover from the past and press forward through the rest. 

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Words fail. Talk is cheap. Actions mean so much. Character changes, sometimes. Perfection never is. Control is uncontrollable. Relationships fade. Friendships wilt away. And life rushes by. People think money equates success. For others dreams are no longer a reality. Some have strength of will with no quality. Beauty becomes skin deep. With all living without consequence

Life has to mean so much more. Love has to be real. There must be something to believe. Adventure should be calling. With a passionate appeal

Trusting with heart and mind. Learning to let go. Reasoning rejected. Desires transformed. A life revolutionized. Faith unveiled. 
Crazy love revealed. Born to die. Life to give

Death exchanged

Sin crossed out. Shame replaced

A beautiful exchange

Glory illuminated the source

Christ revealed

Salvation is here

   

Victory comes. Freedom delivered
A life worth fighting for
Conviction exposed. Reliant confidence
In a love worth living for
..................................

*[Ecclesiates 3]