I\’ve been thinking alot about love lately. Like alot. And I think that love is completely not what I thought it was. Like real, true love. My brother said that everyone gets to a point in their lives when they realize love isn\’t the fairy tale they think it is, so they stop believing that love exists at all. But perhaps love does exist, it\’s just different than we thought it was. Like, every little girl dreams of being locked in a tower guarded by a dragon and we all want our knight in shining armor to slay the dragon and climb to the top of the tower and carry us down and put us on the back of the horse and ride us into the sunset and live happily ever after. We want to be rescued. We want to be saved. We want a boy to rescue and save us from all the evils of the world and protect us forever more. Because they\’re the boy and we\’re the girl. We\’re not supposed to slay dragaons and climb down the tower ourselves. Right? That\’s what love is supposed to be isn\’t it? But the older I get, or I guess the more experiences I get in this department I\’m beginning to think that that\’s not really what love is supposed to be. Like, that might be a shallow form of it, but perhaps there is a much deeper love that can\’t be defined like this. So if this isn\’t love, then what is love? Well, the most obvious answer is God. God is love and love is God. So when we love other people we are sharing God with them. What a powerful thought. So if love is God, and we believe that Jesus is God incarnate then when he said that love is laying one\’s life down for his friend, we can logically conclude that love is sacrifice. Pope John Paul II said once that all a man needs to know about how to love a woman he can learn by looking at a crucifix. If we say that love is God, and God is the most important thing ever, then love is the most important thing ever. This is the one thing we can\’t live without. We were made to love and be loved. So, what is the purpose in life? What is everyone\’s reason for being at all? Well, if you\’re Catholic, or even Christian, or even believe in an afterlife, then you would probably say that the purpose of life is to get to heaven. To be in complete communion with God. So anyone on Earth that loves you and wants to \”save\” you, wants you to go to heaven. That\’s the biggest testiment of love right there. To sacrifice what you personally want in order to help push someone else closer to holiness and closer to God. To help someone else grow. So instead of climbing up the tower, they\’re at the bottom talking you down and telling you you can do it yourself. That you have to do it yourself, for you\’re own personal growth. Anyone can climb a tower and save a princess, but only a guy with a huge amount of faith and respect for the princess can be confident that she can slay the dragons in her life herself and she doesn\’t need a boy to save her, because she is strong enough. That prince, must think very highly of the princess to believe that she is strong enough, brave enough, confident enough, and wise enough to beat the dragon. Instead of putting her in a submissive role where she does nothing for herself, she gets to grow as a person. This is not to say, however, that the prince is lazy and just doesn\’t want to save her himself. But perhaps he loves her so much, that he knows that this will ultimately help her get closer to holiness and is sacrificing the traditional role in order to give her what she really needs and will really fulfill her.
\”I give you my life and all I am, but what have I to give?…Cause I have nothing to my name, but I can give you that.\” – Caedmon\’s Call