love not of you, love not of me

      Hello readers!  Happy Saturday.  I hope you all had a great day like I did.  Today it was warm and beautiful and I felt the first fall breeze blow past us on our morning walk.  I love the fall and the first trees have now begun to change and cover the sidewalks and streets.  I introduced Robert to my age-old game of stepping on leaves and seeing whose makes the loudest crunch.   He pretended to think it was silly, but after I had stepped on a few, he was jumping ahead of me, attempting to beat me to the crunchiest pile in the road.   I love that God makes the leaves change color before they fall from their branches.  It always occurs to me that He did not have to do it that way.  He could have created all trees the same, always green, never changing. But he made the leaves change so that we would know His creative power, so that we may delight in His creation and enjoy its beauty, and to remind us that He loves us.  

      I have been so encouraged by your comments on my posts thus far; I love hearing what you have to say!  I hope that you are all enjoying reading, I love writing.  As I suspected, Robert is grateful that I have found an outlet!

      Since the pork, I have made a great sweet and sour chicken, spaghetti sauce, and birthday cake (Robert’s Birthday is tomorrow).  And I just have to say that spaghetti sauce is my new best friend  There is nothing easier than making homemade sauce.   Even I can’t mess that up.  Brown some beef, throw in some veggies and tomato sauce.  Little oregano and basil and bam, Robert falls in love with me all over again! 

     While the cooking adventures are fun, today’s entry is a bit more on the serious side.  Before I write it I must warn you all that this blog is not just for the stories about me and my kitchen and the things that happen there that no one should hear about.  It is also about my faith, and struggle to be a Proverbs 31 wife.  My desire to know more of God, while at the same time being so undone and in awe of what I find that I am unable to move.

      Those of you who read laurasinrwanda know that I am often very moved by quotes and song lyrics, particularly the latter.  And today I am going to talk about a song by one of the best songwriters I know, Sara Groves.   She wrote a song called Love.  The lyrics are below.

Love,

I made it mine

I made it small

I made it blind

I followed heart

Only to find

It wasn't love

It wasn't love

Love

Of songs and pen

Oh love of movie endings

Takes out the break

Leaves out the bend

And misses love

Love not of you

Love not of me

Come hold us up

Come set us free

Not as we know it

But as it can be

Love’s reality

Is not of passing bravery

It holds out hope

Beyond what's seen

The hope of love

       This song has really been challenging me lately, about many different aspects of life.  First of all, the truth that our culture has made ‘love’ to be something that comes from our own ability and attempts, is based on feelings and is exists to make us happy.  Is not the greatest love according to every film the one that “follows after the heart”?  (Which is, according to the Bible, 'deceitful above all things')  The love championed in the media is that which 'overcomes all obstacles' (like parents who should be the authority on what their children are doing, not seen as an obstacle to overthrow because it ‘feels real’).  The love that ends in divorce when the feeling is gone.  And the 'love' that has totally missed love.

       Secondly, it challenges me in my relationship with Robert.  Now, any of you who know us, know that I love Robert somethin' fierce and that we have been through a lot together.  Meeting in Rwanda, being from two diabolically different countries, long-distance, different languages, being poor missionaries, moving to America…these are just a few.  But I am challenged by this song because I often forget that my love for Robert should come from the Love that is not of us; the love of our Father.  I often try, as the song says, to make it mine; from my own ability and feelings, and it ends up being small and not actually being love at all.  When I love Robert from what is in me, I don’t want to cook, I don’t want to make the bed, I don’t want to clean that floor again.  I don’t want to forgive, the feelings go and it is not love. 

       But when I choose to love Robert with the love that is not of me, or him, but is God’s love that holds us up and sets us free; that is when I love Him the way the Bible instructs me.  That is when I most resemble the woman in Proverbs 31.  That is when I get joy from serving and loving my husband. 

       Ill stop now because I know this is getting long, but let me encourage you all that this world is only coming up with cheap imitations of love.  The real definition and explanation of what love is can be found at the Cross, in the words of the Gospel, and the arms of the one who IS love.

Amen