And We Do

I love how a song can meet you right where you are at; lyrics spelling out a story as if it were your own.  My song this week is by Tenth Avenue North.  It's called "Worn."

You can hear it HERE 

I did something I said I would never do again; I dared to love another intimately.  I took a leap.  And I fell.  Maybe you wonder if he caught me?  Heck no, this ain't no fairy tale we live in; it's reality.  Mine came crashing down.  I have a tendency to be rebellious.  We all do.  We want to lash back when we've been hurt.  We want to do things our own way.  And we can.  So we do.  The same rebellion that leads us to fight for justice can also blind us to ourselves.

Well, I fell in love quickly.  I believed it was meant to be.  I put aside my deepest desires to chase after it.  I learned a lot.  I grew.  And I remembered some long forgotten truths.

We are all free to choose to believe in whatever we wish.  And I choose love. And I believe God is love.  And I believe that he wanted us to experience a loving relationship with him that is intensely personal.  I also believe he placed that same desire in our hearts.  Yet our free will and lack of belief in things we cannot see coaxes us to find other things or endeavors to satisfy that desire.  And we do.

I find myself wanting to pull away from the "we do," and live a life that says, "I do."  It's a commitment to never give up.  It's a promise to stand true in love.  It's the hope that picks you up when you feel like you have fallen down.  It's the truth that life is not a collection of failures and successes; rather a beautiful adventure with another comprised of pain and beauty.

I have yet to ever say, "I do" to any man in my life.  I have however said "I do" to a man who lived and died long before I was ever conceived.  His name was Jesus.  I like to believe that God loved  us so much that he chose to join us on earth.  And he did.  Since God is not a being, he was still here and there and everywhere.  Yet a piece of him became a man and walked with us, felt with us, talked with us, healed us, and drew us into a relationship with him.  Our struggle to believe what we cannot see was given hope; to believe in something we could see.  But many still chose to remain skeptical; and still do.

We yearn for certainty; all the while craving the mystery called love.  But love requires risks.  And we are afraid.  Afraid to say yes.  Afraid to say no.  Afraid to commit to "I do."  What if this?  What if that?  Oh the doubts that creep in....how they can overwhelm.

When I met the man I fell in love with, I thought we shared a passion; we both loved riding bike trails.  It didn't take long for me to realize he only rode one trail.  So hand in hand we set out in search of new trails.  I had a wish list; we shared a desire to explore new territory.  And we did.

Along the way we began to face trails with more technically difficult terrain.  In our relationship we began to do the same.  As the winter carried on and snow continued to come down, we rode together less and less.  I still had a desire to explore new territory. And I did.  He went back to just riding the one trail he knew best.  Conversations turned to text messages.   Trust became intertwined with doubts.  Boundaries became fuzzy.  And we stopped riding together.  We stopped seeing eye to eye.

We realized that though we both loved to ride, we each favored a different kind of trail.  Then we decided to ride our separate ways.  The trails I like to ride aren't appealing to everyone.  You don't have to love Jesus to be my friend, but I  can't enter into a sacred union with one  who doesn't share this love; because it is central to how I choose to live.  My love for him permeates who I am and what I live for.  His love is why I exist.  And I can't deny that.

I entered into a relationship with this guy believing that if love does conquer all, then we could make it work by setting our different ideals aside.  And we did.  But we couldn't.  Because they aren't just ideals; at least not for me.

My faith is a light that guides me.  Though  the road looks narrow, the view once you pass the trail-head and pedal across rugged ground....it's awe-inspiring.  The vastness of the land surrounding the trails humbles me with it's colorful and majestic landscape, and invites me to come back for more.  It offers promise.  It gives me courage and confidence when I have none of my own left to summon.  It awakens the deepest places of my soul and tells me that although at times I will feel broken,  love will make me whole.  So I give myself to this love.  And it mends in a way that time does not.  I offer my life to the one who gave his life for me.   For ME.  And you.  And I say, "I do."