How many people do we belong to in our life? How many times do our hearts open- close- then re-open themselves to an old love? Start a fresh journey with a new love? The thing that intrigues me the most… is I loved them all the same, yet so different. I love my mom entirely, with all of my being, and I belong to her. My dad and I fought the battle every day to get to the place where we are now, and I belong to him, yet, I belong to my mom? My heart feels completely full when I think of either one of them, but when I think of my Jesus, my sister, him, and even the hims before him, it feels the same way. I belong, or did belong to all those people.
I have asked myself so many times, can we really love more than one person, soul mate kind of love, in our lifetime? For the longest time, usually to comfort myself through a break up, I would tell myself no, that there is only one true love, and the rest was practice...but how can that be? It’s not, I can’t believe that. I have been lucky enough, more blessed then I can ever comprehend, to have gone through my life thus far with an amazing collection of best friends. Most I am still friends with, some I am not…and whether we don’t talk anymore because we out grew each other, or because we made the conscious decision to go our separate ways, for the season(s) they were in my life, I belonged to them.
We are not supposed to have regrets, and for the most part I don’t. I subscribe to the ideal that God has a plan for me, and my sinful nature guided me off that path more times than I’d like to remember, but God always met me where I was at, and readjusted things from there. I have fought a bloody war, and I am grateful that there haven't been more casualties. I am not okay with losing one friend, let alone the number of friends I have, but what upsets me more than coming across old pictures or an inside joke now and then, is the little piece of my heart they took with them…the loss that comes with no longer belonging. Where this is all going, if it is going anywhere at all, is that the loss of those friends seems lonely, but I love the friends I have now so much I don’ know where I would find any room to love more.
I look in his eyes and I know. I just know. It doesn’t take away from the fact that I knew then too. There were a few I didn’t love, even if I thought I did, but there were some I did, and for the short time I was in their lives, I belonged to them…..
My dad told me something a few weeks ago that hasn’t left my mind since…. We had an honest discussion, well; I had an honest listen, to him talking to me about the divorce. It’s a touchy subject, as it should be, and we haven’t had much dialogue about the topic since it happened. I have struggled since the day the decision was made to end things, with an overwhelming amount of emotion, most of which has been guilt for putting my family through such heartache. Being responsible for hurting someone(s) you love, someone(s) you still belong to, is the hardest thing I have gone through. I can deal with anger, I almost wish for it to make things easier, because to love someone, still, but know you have to make a decision that is best for you, that will hurt them, there aren’t enough tears to cry. The second my dad brought the guilt up, and how I need to release it…give it to the God I thank for forgiveness and grace every day, I began to cry. This is my dad, the dad I belonged to until I married someone and belonged to them for a short while, only to end things resulting in me not really belonging to anyone (except my mom, Jesus, my sister, my friends- get it?) … and he’s telling me to forgive myself….then he says, “it’s okay Megan, you think with your heart not with your head, you always have. It’s who you are.”
It’s who I am.
The thing is my heart doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to my mother, my father, my sister, my Jesus, my best friends, and him….. The greatest commandment of all is to love like Jesus loved. We have become a people that view putting others before ourselves as a weakness. It’s me...me...me...” I’ll love you as much as I can but only if it isn’t at a sacrifice to me...” Ugh. There is a lot of back and forth I don’t get involved with, I don’t do soap box, I don’t do debates, but this is one thing I am adamant about. True joy, pure and true joy in its most natural form, comes from loving others, doing for others, giving to others. My heart hasn’t belonged to me since I was old enough to use it, and the problem (for me) does not come with figuring out how to grow up and take back my heart, to think for myself and only myself, but to find a balance between thinking with the heart I have left, that belongs to who it belongs to now, and not letting the pieces of my heart that were given away to those I used to belong, to damage me. Make me a cynic. Lonely.
I have loved more than I have done anything else, and I have not always done it perfectly but Lord knows I tried. I don’t just love a little, I don’t even know how- I give it all, everything, every part of me to belong to every part of you. I guess what I am wondering, what I still haven’t quite figure out, is how I can love so entirely the people I belong to now, when there is still so much of me belonging to those that aren’t here loving me anymore. What a humbling position to even be in.
The amazing thing is that the love that you have for everyone equally, yet in different ways, is not your own but is God's. Apart from the rebirthing power of the Holy Spirit through the love of Jesus Christ, we would never have the capacity to love unconditionally as Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit love us unconditionally. Apart from Jesus, we are selfish people, even to the point that our kind, loving acts are at heart, selfish. It is by Him that we live and love and have our being.
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