Finding Mr. Right

Love. We long for it. We dream about it. We will wait for it and even fight for it. It is hard to overstate the importance of love to and for us. Author and speaker Josh Riebock has stated, “I can last three weeks without food, three days without water, and three seconds without love.” Love is essential to life, essential to what it is to be human. Why is this? Why is love so important?

I have struggled recently with the importance of love. Why is something so messy and unpredictable as love so essential? Some would argue that love is essential because at our core we are relational beings made in the image of God, a God who is love. So it reasons that, like God, love should lie at our core. I have no argument with this. I am sure this does lie deep inside me, but I would say that this explains more about my ability to love than my desire. Something else inside me drives me to seek love.  About the best I can describe this desire is that it is a desire to be complete. Somehow love completes me, fulfills me. I might even go so far as to say, love fixes me. There is a whole lot in me to fix.

I don’t think I am the only one who pursues love in an effort to be complete, to be fulfilled, to be fixed. The prevailing narrative of our culture seems to be that love somehow fixes us, that we are not complete or whole until we find love. And when we find love, well. . .life is so much better, better because love makes us better. Love makes me better. That actually is an interesting concept, one that if I pay attention, I see all around me. Take the average Disney princess movie. In each one you find a lonely young woman whose life is a mess, literally. Snow White came from a broken home which led her to live and party with seven guys. Sleeping Beauty was caught in the middle of a feud and suffered from a debilitating aversion to work. She fell asleep when she put her hand to a spinning wheel. Cinderella came from a super dysfunctional family with some severe father issues which led her to develop a compulsion for cleaning and a proclivity for talking to rodents. Needless to say, these women are a mess, but then they find love. Each one meets a handsome prince, falls madly in love and then. . .they live happily ever after. Did you catch that? They lived happily ever after. Somehow love can take a dysfunctional woman who lived and partied with seven guys and so transform her that she can in a moment live happily ever after. That is the power of love.

OK. So that is Disney, but isn’t this the narrative of love we see all around us? Is this not the backbone of every romance novel or movie, the heartfelt desire of every love-starved teenager? There is a girl/guy whose life is a miserable mess. They meet someone and fall in love and this love transforms their life from mess to wonder. Somehow love transforms life. Somehow love fixes life, at least this is the hope. The trouble is that happily ever after isn’t found quite so easily.

In real life, things don’t often work like they do in the movies. Things are a bit messier and love is a bit stingier with its deliverance. We quickly discover that finding love and experiencing completeness are not one and the same. Love rarely fixes us. Often, love simply takes a mess and complicates rather than clarifies it. Is this to say that our hopes and dreams, our desire to experience love in such a way that it fixes us are misguided? The cynic in me wants to let go of the dream, saying that it was nothing more than a Hollywood hoax, a ploy used to draw me in so that I would plop twelve dollars on the counter for a ticket. But there is something deeper inside that says to hold on to the dream, a small voice from my true self that says it really is possible to experience love in such a way that it makes me complete.

If this voice is correct, then what should I do? Should I keep looking until I find that right person, that one person with whom I can fall madly in love, and in that love experience the transformation of my life? That seems like a whole lot to put on myself and on another person. I don’t know if anyone can deliver or if I want to wait long enough to find that person. Then again, maybe I am not really looking for another person. Maybe that is altogether the problem. Maybe I am looking for someone greater than a person, someone whose love can truly complete and fix me. Maybe this is what Paul was talking about in Romans 12, giving myself in a loving relationship to God, a relationship which fixes me (verses 1-2). Could it be that the thing I truly want I can truly have? Could it be that I can have love, a love that fixes, and completes me? Could it be that there really is a happily ever after, after all?

A fellow traveler,

Blake

What’s my next step?

We encourage you to consider engaging in the following as a way of handing off faith in your family.

Foster a love relationship with God: A loving relationship with God transforms us. A loving relationship with God is fostered just like any loving relationship. It takes time and effort to get to know and fall in love with the true character of the one we are in relationship with. This week, consider fostering this loving relationship with God in your family using 1 Corinthians 13.4-8a, exchanging “God” for “love” in these verses. Seek to teach your children who God truly is and how he desires to relate to them in an effort to build a foundation of trust that helps them love God in return.

We encourage you to consider engaging in the following as a way of deepening your own faith.

Go on a date with God: A love relationship with God is transformative but like any relationship, it takes time and effort. This week, consider fostering your love relationship with God by going on a date together. Pick something that you really enjoy and invite God along. Seek to engage in the activity with the awareness that God is with you. Simply seek to enjoy his presence rather than asking anything of him. Journal your experience and consider repeating it soon.