As a child, love meant racing to be the first to greet Dad as he pushed through the screen door.
As a teenager, I shared confidences with girlfriends, building a love that protected our vulnerably emerging selves.
As a young adult, it was all about the chase; romance, flowers, stolen embraces, and the fever pitch of emotion that tied the rhythm of my heart to the sound of a voice.
Mother-love is unlike any other; constant, sweeter, deeper, purer, and ever-growing.
One of the gifts of this time in my life is the ability to integrate all these different kinds of love, and to see how they build, one upon the other. And, with this cache of love stored away as reference, I now see love in places I had never considered looking before.
Love is a progression. I remember the first time I really heard the following lines, the way they moved me, and the promise in them. They were read by my ninth-grade Sunday school teacher, and many years later, served as my marriage vows.
“1 Corinthians 13:1-13
“If I speak in the tongues of men and angels,
but have not love,
I have become sounding brass or a tinkling symbol.
And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing.
And if I dole out all my goods, and
if I deliver my body that I may boast
but have not love, nothing I am profited.
Love is long suffering,
love is kind,
it is not jealous,
love does not boast,
it is not inflated.
It is not discourteous,
it is not selfish,
it is not irritable,
it does not enumerate the evil.
It does not rejoice over the wrong, but rejoices in the truth
It covers all things,
it has faith for all things,
it hopes in all things,
it endures in all things.
Love never falls in ruins;
but whether prophecies, they will be abolished; or
tongues, they will cease; or
knowledge, it will be superseded.
For we know in part and we prophecy in part.
But when the perfect comes, the imperfect will be superseded.
When I was an infant,
I spoke as an infant,
I reckoned as an infant;
when I became [an adult],
I abolished the things of the infant.
For now we see through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know as also I was fully known.
But now remains
faith, hope, love,
these three;
but the greatest of these is love.”
Later, I discovered the writings of the ancient poet, Rumi.
This is Love
“Love is reckless; not reason.
Reason seeks a profit.
Love comes on strong,
consuming herself, unabashed.
Yet, in the midst of suffering,
Love proceeds like a millstone,
hard surfaced and straightforward.
Having died of self-interest,
she risks everything and asks for nothing.
Love gambles away every gift God bestows.
Without cause God gave us Being;
without cause, give it back again.”
A steady mist fell as I drove into work this morning. The light changed, and as I rolled to a stop, I noticed a flurry of activity to my right. A young, heavy-set, African-American man, clothed in ill-fitting blue jeans and Arizona Cardinals football jersey, filled the wet sidewalk. Drawing my attention was the huge bouquet of heart-shaped balloons impeding his progress. Blinking silver and red, they danced and bounced above his smiling face. As he wrestled with the large, red bow serving as his hand-hold, I thought, “Now THAT is love.”
Are We There Yet? 
