Real Love… The beginning patchwork of something beautiful

Love….. such a word in our culture.

Often it is just that, a word.  In the same breath that we say we have the deepest and most adoring love for someone we also so passionately proclaim the love we have for the new Taco Bell Doritos taco.  We are not only a culture that doesn’t understand true love but we don’t even have the words in our language to begin to understand it.

While you may have high hopes that today I am going to give you all the answers that your heart has been longing for for so long – the things that, when heard, they will instantly make everything come into play and make sense – well… I will be letting you down today because I don’t know either.  ( I know you are thinking… wait what the heck?!? I thought this was going somewhere)  “It is, and it isn’t” would be my answer to that thought.

I am going to share with you where I am in my journey of learning what real love means and then I will also be sharing with you somethings we have in store over a period of time to open the door for others to step in here at the nothings and give us a small glimpse into this huge idea of love.

Valentines is coming up in our american culture and for a 29 year old girl who isn’t married I am supposed to be obligated to hate this holiday… The truth is I actually don’t mind it; it is kind of fun at times.   But I do have small moments in which I do feel a strong emotion of dislike about it, mostly in stores. But, when I stop and look at the motive of why I have this strong emotion, I get a glimpse into who I really am and where I truly am.

It is the nagging reminder that there is something greater out there that, at moments, feels like I am the only human that hasn’t figured out the formula to gain access to it.

But the truth, when I stop and cry out to the Lord, is that I just don’t understand true and real love.

I have to remind myself often that what I see around me in February every year isn’t the truth I should be looking for.  Which can I add, that February  is the same month as my birthday.  So somewhere in the month I have a moment where I feel robbed by Saint Valentine.  Then at some point I usually lash out irrationally at him and how he had to be so great as to have done a holiday in MY month… but then I move on and realize it wasn’t his fault he was just trying to do good in the world.  So, in order to save face here… Way to go dude!

Now, back to my point.  Often what we see in this love emphasized time is not the real Love of Jesus.  Jesus talked about love being the very thing that causes us to lay down our lives for another.  How can that love be the love we celebrate with a heart shaped balloon that says Be Mine?  That is the key it isn’t… it can’t be. 

I am not married as I have said before, but I have loved and lost; I have family and close friends so when we talk about the love that lays downs one’s life, that I can get behind and understand.  The Lord has had me on a journey for over a year where he has been talking to me and moving in my heart and mind to really understand Him as a Bridegroom.  It has been a challenging concept for me, yet so powerful.  I have been in John 17 a lot, and the first time I ever read it from the perspective of what a husband is supposed to be I understood more than ever real love.

“While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me.  I have guarded them and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the scripture might be fulfilled.’  -John 17:12

Here we see something so familiar… while I was with them I have kept them… I have guarded them…. Will you keep her in sickness and in health… This is Christ’s commitment to us just as vows often hold a husband and wife to commit to one another.

This is real love…. The love that keeps us… the love that guards us to no end to the point in which not one of them has been lost.

This is what real love is beginning to mean to me more and more not just from a person to person perspective but from my Savior as well.  That He desires to keep me and guard me and not just me but all.  This is also meant to be a resounding definition of real love. A love that holds fast to the commitments it makes and the love that isn’t always easy, but always powerful.

This is the start here at the busynothings where we are going to be walking down a path to discover stories of those who have either grabbed onto, understand a small piece, or have experienced a shred of what this real love looks like in this fallen and broken world.

Gracie Martin will be our first post tomorrow and she will be sharing several chapters in her story of earthly love that has done nothing but bring glory to the Lord and helped many others around her and her husband understand how the Lord wants to reach beyond the boarders of heaven and shows us each day this real love.

This is how you will find us most of the time… laughing over something ridiculous… =-)
Photography by: Angela J Photography

Gracie, Jacob and I have been friends for 4 years.  I was great friends with Jacob before him and Gracie dated and as Gracie came into the picture the Lord truly knit our hearts together in wonderful ways as friends, counselors, and sisters for one another.

I was honored to get to be a small part of their relationship and help them walk through so much individually and together in many aspects.  I was honored by getting to stand with them at their wedding and still to this day will never forget the feeling of victory in the room as they married in front of many who knew the journey they had come down and had full faith that the Lord would use them in mighty ways.  

Gracie is a passionate person in all that she does.  She is a person who loves well and who hates to be recognized for the good she does.   I wrote about her and Jacob in a post earlier this year about the NWA: Water Walk, which is a wonderful cause, however, now I am looking forward to all getting to know Gracie’s beautiful heart.

I am passionately excited to see what all her story will bring about in the world around her and in the lives that are stretched out through computer screens all over.

We will also be bringing others to tell their stories in this journey.  This is something that we desire many others to join in with comments and if you have stories to contact us and we will give you a place to share.

We desire for ourselves and the world around us to begin to learn from others and understand a real love that changes all it touches.