Love Is Not Made

Flight departs at 4am. I've still got a long time to go, but I've been thinking. These past few weeks have been quite interesting. More than ever, the words "How have you been?" have been said to me, usually by old friends, freshman floor mates, and people I see around. I'm often reluctant to have a prepared or well thought out response to that question. Rather, a one-syllable retort of "fine" would suffice for me. I feel like I've written this before. Whenever I do try to utter a complete sentence about how I've been doing, there is one thing that I've been thinking about which I wish I could have said rather than "Hanging in there." I'm watching Reign Over Me. Sometimes I feel like Charlie Fineman.

Every year, I feel like my understanding of love, that scope of what it looks like and where it comes from, expands wider with every act I bear witness to. The smallest works or products of love simply amaze me and show me how young I am. Love is an interesting and perplexing thing that we give. We don't own it; it comes not from us. Without it being shared with us, we would utilize alternate paths when engaging in a relationship. A good example would be a business-centered relationship: meeting you to get what I want. There are so many facets of love that I don't know about that I'd like to experience. I observe my brothers' actions at times and I am so confused and surprised by the things they do out of love. It is not that their actions are appalling or taboo, but I am literally blown away at how they actually thought to be as loving as they were, or rather, how they did not think at all! Love through second nature.

This past week I was sitting in the living room of Tim's house. Christopher came over with three freshman girls who brought pasta and utensils to whip up some shrimp scampi. Seeing that I had already satisfied my mortal gluttony at an Asian restaurant less than an hour prior, I waited until everybody left before I engaged in a late-night secondary dinner. Peter and I were in the kitchen when I realized that there was shrimp scampi left. He wasn't much of a fan of the shrimp so he collected a bowl of the noodles. I gathered what remained in the pot, which was a lot of shrimp (which, mind you, can never ever leave me unsatisfied) and a little bit of noodles.

Now is the point in time to pause and give this anecdote some clarity.

I, in no way, harbored or expressed any disdain towards my bowl of food. Besides noticing the difference in contents between Peter's bowl and mine, no additional thoughts were allocated to this situation.

As Peter and I sit down to watch Tropic Thunder, here is where he makes me think. He says to me, "let me give you some of my noodles." What on earth? How did he think of doing that? He noticed I lacked noodles and offered some of his. I was so appreciative and at the same time found it so weird that he did that. I was explaining this to Hillary at the pizzeria yesterday and had to preface the story with my knowledge that for a lot of people that isn't weird at all. In fact, I would say that I'm probably the odd one for investing such a level of thought into what a friend did. Nonetheless, these are positive thoughts and this expression of love was in fact a second nature that I did not understand.

To add perspective, I think about if I were in Peter's place and I saw my friend had a lot of shrimp. I would recognize his wealth of shrimp, deficiency of noodles and go about my business. I wouldn't necessarily gnash my teeth at the fact that I should share my noodles with him. I would be nowhere close to refraining from sharing what I have, because I wouldn't even think up the idea of sharing what I have. It is almost as if I don't posses that little bit of good-willed energy that sparks those small, spontaneous decisions to do something selfless. Some may judge me for not being able to think that far in. Often times, usually by Christian friends who were raised in the church, I would be verbally judged for not doing something selfless or chivalrous that I was expected to do. It wasn't that I was refusing to be a nicer or more courteous brother, I just didn't think that there was anything I could have given up.

I have experienced what love looks like through God and his people. It has been like nothing else. It is truly something no man of the world could offer. Our understanding of love, as mentioned before, is through sharing. It is not our own. My parents both had parents who struggled to love them. They have told me some crazy stories about their upbringing and it involves a lot of fighting and running away. Their best understanding of love is passed down to me and it is perfect in its good-willed intention for a son such as myself, but it is also tarnished from our broken nature. I am no separate or special case and neither are my parents. Their upbringing doesn't make their understanding of love more or less broken than another parent. It's not the parenting; rather, they are only human and so am I. They are not poor parents. That is preposterous. The bottom line is, I don't understand a lot of this love. I used to get my ass kicked in the boy's bathroom while my "best friends" watched it from the side, so sharing noodles is an absolutely amazing testimony of love coming from a brother.

Just some thoughts.