If I Fell in Love With You...

"If I fell in love with you, would you promise to be true and help me understand. Cos I've been in love before, and I found that love was more than just holding hands..." - The Beatles, If I Fell

 I should be working on something else entirely right now, but instead I've let my mind wander too far into someone else's heart and now I've gone and given myself this uncontrollable urge to write...

I have been in a lot of places over the last few weeks. Some of them are physical places, others are emotional and many are spiritual. I have been trying desperately to keep my focus on the road ahead, and yet there stands in my path a distraction far greater than I could imagine. You see, I created this blog because I am someone obsessed with the idea of falling in love. I am absolutely in love with falling in love.

And that is a dangerous path to walk down. Because then you become "That Guy" who goes from girl to girl without any sincere attachment to them. But that's where I believe most people are wrong, because to fall in love with someone requires you to place a piece of yourself within their heart. In doing that you form an attachment that is hard to ignore once it has been broken. Because when you fall in love with falling in love, you cause yourself to be shattered into pieces that you can never recover.

And yet still I continue to fall in love all the time....

But it isn't always in the way you expect. I don't fall in love with a girl on the bus or at work. In all honesty I don't frequently fall in love with people, but I do fall in love with pieces of them. With one's laugh, or another's smile, or maybe just the way someone says my name when she's annoyed with me.

Actually, I fall in love with the way a lot of people say my name when they're annoyed with me...

But the thing is, I fall in love with something about someone every day, and I fall out of love with those pieces to, especially when something new takes its place. The way one glares when I'm being sweet or how another dances when she's excited. Or when someone snorts when she laughs...

But I'm not in love with these people, just pieces of them, giving pieces of myself to pieces of others, showing them a love that they might never actually notice.


I rarely fall in love with a whole person, Because I've spent too much of myself falling in love with whole people who would just fall away and take more than I had given in the process.

...

And yet now there's you.... I fell in love with the way you carried yourself on the first day I saw you. And then I heard you laugh and I fell in love with that too. Once we were friends, every day I found a new piece of you to fall in love with, and I never realized it until now... But I fell in love with you quietly and without discovering why.

But I don't love you wholly, because that is something that takes more than watching from a far and pretending that I don't want to fall for you.

Then again, maybe I'm not pretending and I truly don't, because I know what love does to people.

It kills them. In the kindest and most beautiful way possible. 

And if I fell in love with you... Well that might just be the end of me all together.

Praying , The Beauty of Self-loathing

Heavenly Father, Lord of Hosts,

Tonight I come to you with a heart that's heavy and a mind that's foggy. You see today I had the joy of going to wedding for the son of one of the elders at the church. I didn't know anyone who was there expect the elder, his wife and other church members. But no one whom I knew very closely. The wedding was beautiful and nearly brought me to tears, though not from beauty.

You see, there's a reason I dislike going to weddings, Our Father. and that reason is because it reminds me of Her. She was the one who stole my heart with the first look and to this day still has hooks that cling to hope like a desperate sailor drifting after a storm. She was the one who I swore you made for me, yet all She believed was "Not here, Not now, Not me" and Lord was She right.

I am haunted by the thought of Her on days like this Lord. On days where we celebrate the successful beginning of a love that will last a lifetime if it's lucky. When we celebrate a love that will be dragged through the debris of emotional baggage and stories that only end in heartache, where memories will haunt like ghosts begging to be forgotten. I am reminded of Her and how much I wanted to sort through the garbage that is this world in order to carve out a piece of beauty that would make us both at least mostly happy.

But instead of that, I am haunted by Her wedding that I never saw, seeing that man that I never met see Her all in white and the tears they shared because of how in love they were. I am haunted by that laugh and the first dance they shared that I never watched. I think of how She moved past me so quickly, like I was a piece of stone sinking to the bottom of the sea, as distant of a memory as love is from hate. And Lord I am angry because She got to move on, She got to be free and I got to be forgotten. But She....

She never could be.

I hear the cries of Her first child on days like these, and the laughter supports Her family through the world that they share.

Father, I cannot forget Her and I do not know why. She moved on and yet on days like today Her memory is what consumes my mind. It's been 6 and a half years and still I am stuck on the idea that She would come back someday...

But it's only on days like today, days where I forget to see where I've gone, how far I have come from where I was. It's because on a day like this I don't remember how to love myself. And when that happens I realize that no one could love me like those two who exchanged rings love each other.

Lord I pray for peace today. Because you see me in a light that I cannot understand from the shadows of my loathing. Help me to see what I have failed to see. To see what She saw in me the day that we first kissed. To see how much saying goodbye hurt for Her...

Lord I pray for a love for myself like how I once loved Her. I am tired of Loathing and Hurt being my constant companions. I still believe in Saviors.

Lord as I fall past in this vast ocean of your beauty, don't forget who you intended me to be, because I know that I already have.

The Deepest Desire of My Heart

  There is one thing in life that I have wanted from as early as I can recall. It's the one thing that no matter how much my life changed or how much my ideas of the world evolved, remained the focused goal of why I am here on this earth. It's not to do anything amazing or miraculous or to completely change the world, no it's much simpler than that. 

  For the last few months I had decided that maybe that wasn't the road that was for me. I had been through some rough times with friends and a now ex-girlfriend who I had thought I wanted to marry. Turns out I did want to marry her, but she realized that being with me meant both of us would sacrifice our own dreams of where we were going with life and what we really deserved out of a relationship. I was so caught up with her that I didn't realize how correct she was until months after she said goodbye. But in that time I decided that I was going to give up on my dream, my one life goal that I had always had, because chasing it always ended up in me hurting and losing amazing people from my life.

  I walked away from the dream in my heart and let myself wander with ideas of where I was going. I knew I would end up preaching someday and that was something I wanted to do, yet sharing the gospel and giving my life to Christ felt... well it didn't feel like everyone else says it does. It felt like I was walking away from something I loved in exchange for something I loved. That's on odd way of putting it, but it's true. I wanted to give my life over to Jesus and with it my whole heart, and I felt that by abandoning this crazy dream of mine I could do that. I mean after all, it was something that had lead me down some really dark and dumb roads. 

  Chasing this dream was something that I did not know how to not do. I had chased it from the moment I really figured out what it was, and every time I ended up broken and lost as to what it really was I wanted. Yet each time I still wanted it, and I couldn't think of why it was. I mean, why would I keep chasing something that was obviously unreachable? 

  

  So when I chose Christ over this dream, I thought I would feel free and be able to move forward in my pursuit of living a Godly life. The first few months were difficult, but eventually I accepted that I had to stick to my decision and I shut that part of myself away. And that seemed to work, but I still continued to feel hollow. 

  Then I went and accepted an internship at a church full of retired ministers and missionaries and Christian educators. While at the church I started to feel that itch of the dream stir. I was surrounded by people who either had lived my dream or were still living it and it made me feel as if I had made the wrong choice. I prayed and I talked with others about it, though I tried to keep the intention of my questions subtle. And in my exploration I had a moment of brilliance.

A whisper of the divine who told me that I had been wrong all along.

This dream I had given up was not a fleeting distraction but a piece of a greater whole. It was the essence of who I am and it is something I need in order to fulfill my purpose in this world. I cannot do what I need to without this dream and God will provide me with what I need. 

  I could not be the best version of myself without my dream, because it was the reason I live and breath.

  My dream is to be a father. A good man and a good father, and I know that my road will be a long one, but God will guide me and with Him and my dream I know I can move forward to fulfill my purpose in His divine plan.