Learning to Love.

It's been a while...and somethings have changed drastically, and somethings remain the same.

I'm sitting outside of the school library alone- watching the sun quickly recede into the deep. Darkness is coming upon me crashing down in giant waves, it is smothering the light and soon it will be evening.

I imagine the headlights of cars, store signs and street lamps coming to life all around this desert state- in various colors, some of them flickering and hesitating for a moment due to years of routine...some shimmering proudly like the stars that line the heavens, others bashfully glowing with a low hum...soaked in earthly humility. For a moment I wish I were floating up above just beyond the clouds, so that I might witness the show... how tiny dots would suddenly sparkle in succession, appearing from one dotted gridline to another. Perspective can change the mundane to the majestic.

This week has been rather tumultuous and I feel weak at the moment. I have begun a relationship and am learning that loving someone is difficult. It is something to be learned and thoughtfully, carefully approached. It is not necessarily because she is hard to love, but rather that drawing close to someone tends to expose more of oneself... she is a mirror by which I am able to see myself and all of the ugly parts...parts I thought I had long lost... But they are here, in full fledge in some cases freshly drawn out from deep recesses of the person I once was... I am selfish, needy, insecure, proud and stubborn and it's hurting the person I am trying to love. What is more, I am struggling to receive her love... questioning it as if it were something fleeting, mysterious, like the morning haze... or a dream from which I will soon awaken from...and I am realizing that I feel hardly worth the love of another... hardly worth her affections because it still remains at times that I am my own worst enemy.

I don't want to be this way... it's difficult and I feel broken and alone. I want to be stronger for us...to protect her from all that is wrong with the world...but i can't help but feel sometimes that she needs most to be protected from me...

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13)

For Christmas I suprised Katie with a beta fish in an interesting vase/water pitcher. Two long stem roses were placed soaring up above the pitchers opening while blue and clear marbles filled the floor, accenting the glittery scales of mr. fish. This has been something we have both since enjoyed a great deal... The vase/water pitcher is in fact a water pitcher from a trendy home furnishings store, and thus has a very unique shape.

This afternoon, I was over at Katie's place and she had begun cleaning this uniquely shaped aquarium. In my attempt to help I dropped the vase in the sink shattering it to pieces. Fortunately, the fish had already been stored away in his hotel room (that is the cup i bought him in), thus no animals were harmed in the making of this accident, but the vase was reduced to nothing but shards. We spent sometime cleaning up the kitchen as the glass was just everywhere, on the counter, the sink, floor and even imbedded in my shirt. We were both upset, but quiet and relatively slow in our actions. It had been a difficult day and to be honest I had been a pretty shitty boyfriend all morning... As we left the kitchen, I noticed fine specks of glass on my hands and arms sparkling in the light and so I did my best to brush them off outside...as we left the house, Katie came close to hug me because she knew I was feeling less then great, not only because of the accident, but because of the kind of morning we had had... The truth was, I was scared to touch her for fear that there might still be glass remaining on me that might cut her... and so I handled her hands and her hugs with great caution as if I were holding something too delicate and invaluable, as if I were somehow infected and contagious.

And I guess at the moment I am realizing something about love and about myself. I am covered in pieces of jagged glass, embedded deep in my soul. Some pieces so fine that they pass fastidious sweeps... but sharp and harmful they remain. I have to learn how to handle more gently...because the things I do, the words I speak are sharp and piercing and I'm hurting the one I love most in this life. She is delicate, soft and invaluable and I always just feel so damn clumsy in this thing like a bear on a unicycle trying to hold on to priceless, porcelain antique.

I will say this. I am learning and relearning (daily) my need for Grace. She grants me this day after day... and often I don't know how or even why, but I am thankful and undeserving, which sort of is assumed in the idea of grace I suppose. I am learning though I think...or at least trying to and this is no small task and love, real love is scaling mountain after mountain, it is finding truth, facing it and changing accordingly, it is a persistent trial by fire, constantly dying and finding life by the Grace of another.



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