 Can Love LAST ? Can Love ENDURE Life's roller coaster course? For those of us who grew up in a loveless state, there cannot be described how deeply affecting, and intensely felt is the Love that is so far beyond human love. I write of Love that is divine. It reduces one to tears to think of Love's sheer embracing of our wretched frailties and stubborn strengths that harm, the understanding of our own non-understanding of ourselves and Love's attempts to show us what we do not see. The very gentleness in which this Love is felt, by which it teaches, and in which we find hope and comfort touches in me the child who longed for just such love and who, when reaching out for it, met only one huge void equal to the emptiness hidden in her shrunken heart. Today, coming to the close of life can be but a beginning of timeless Love that never fails, and will never be withheld, cradling my weariness so tenderly, reveling with me in the sheer joy of beauty found in all the treasures Nature and creativity offer me so freely So, why does our Creator allow Love with its gentle persuasion of comfort in times of distress, the wordless look that embodies " I understand", the touch of hand or holding that transmits, " it's alright to cry, tears are but minaiture pools reflecting your pain and releasing it - don't dam it up - let it flow". Love sees no cost to supplying anything that meets the need of friend or reconciles a foe. Loves measures not the miles to walk beside one loved, no matter what the climate, no matter smooth or rough the path. It does not recognize its selflessness for this is not the motive underlying sacrifice or pleasure. Love rejoices with and for, weeps with and for, encourages and empowers the other. It is not afraid to honestly confront where truths collide, to listen and to voice, agree or agree to disagree. So why does our Creator allow Love? Perhaps because Love provides the best haven for the loneliness of the lost, cradling the unbeloved in gentle acceptance of their feelings of being so terribly unloveable and quietly, gradually, instilling hope to the hopeless and help to the helpless. Love has power to melt the frozen needs unmet in the deprivations of a loveless childhood or still unhealed adult relationship. Love shares laughter, pleasures, delights and dreams - halves the cares, chases rainbows, jumps in puddles, gathers flowers, beats the drum, treasures beauty and values humour. Our Creator allows Love for these things. Love is tested is so many ways and I have tested Love shown to me so kindly and so gently and the fruit I eat today gets sweeter with the tasting. Would that my Love for others were the same. It cannot be without the weathering, and we only have one shot at Life - oh how I need to Love as others have loved me. I do not need to look into the eyes of Jesus, but into the eyes of the poverty stricken, the tormented rich, the alcoholic, abused and abuser, addict, autistic child, psychotic soul fled far inside from too painful reality, survivors of war, of famine, disease, or ruin and I can see torment, and fathomless grief, a wisdom born of knowledge fired in crucibles of pain and suffering - but it is with the same LOVE that Jesus had that I can look right back into those eyes and they can know there is full and loviing acceptance ( not tolerance - to put up with, or endure), but that I truly ACCEPT them for who and what they are with all that is good and all that is bad. I also know that I could not possibly Love them if I had not first been Loved. ******************* Goessoftly Retired therapist www.goessoftlyishere.com (permission for reprints is required)   | BEAUTY | LOVE | SPIRIT OF MY HEART | ANALOGY | ONENESS | | THE HEALING PROCESS | DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER | POETRY | Biographical Entries | THE OTHER SIDE OF LIFE | STORIES FOR LITTLES (Pigmus and friends) | |
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