For our free day in Ulsinj, we decided to hike to the long beach, which was 6 km away. We were told that we should follow the hike along the ocean, because it is prettier than the road. Adventure, here we come! It was an absolutely gorgeous hike, but, I must say that the path downright disappeared at times. Well worth the scrambing over rocks, and scraping up my legs, but I was pretty tired by the time we actually made it to the beach.
We walked around for too short of a time, and then realized that we had to walk back. hmm… cliffs+ thorns+ my usual clumsiness+ night time= possibly my first trip to a Montenegro hospital. Luckily for us, God is a genius, and thought this out before I did. We ran into a man named Ziggy who was walking along the beach. I’m not sure why people know we are Americans, but we stick out everywhere we go. It’s like they can smell us or something… hmm… it is the world race, so I guess they can.
Ziggy spoke very good English, and offered to give us a ride back to the short beach. As we were driving back home, we told him a little bit about what we were doing, and why we were doing it.
“Christians? Are you Catholic?”
“No, we’re protestant.” we answered.
“My first wife was a protestant. My second wife is too.”
“Cool,” I say.
He drove us to a restaurant and joined us for dinner. He begins the conversation by asking, “What makes Christianity different from Islam? I follow the teachings of Buddhism. Why is it different?”
Now, I’ve been to apologetics school. I know some things about the illegitimacy of Islam, and Buddhism, and I have some knowledge that can prove the accuracy of the Bible. A few years ago, the old me, at the mere mention of Buddhism, would have sought to argue him into discrediting Buddhism. Now, I was filled with peace. I didn’t want to argue him into anything, I just want him to know how much God loved him.
We sit there in silence for a couple of seconds, and then I begin, “I would say the difference between those religions and ours is love.” We started talking about that, and it was just great because we all chimed in with something to say. He asked us, “What do you say about loving each other? Say. you meet a boy, and you like him. is there anything wrong with loving him? To love is fun. When you can (breathes deeply) smell them… touch them…. taste them… it is fun…. why are you against it?”
We started talking about love, sex and marriage and the purpose of it all. It was a great conversation, and he was surprised that we a) did not have meaningless sex (or sex at all for that matter) – b) our choice to abstain from sex was not because we thought sex was bad and, I think the most surprising thing to him was c) we said that God is for sex and love.
He enjoys feeling the passion of making love, he tells us. There is nothing like that in all the world.
“Yes, it may be great to be with that person for that night, but what happens when she leaves?” we ask.
“I am alone.” He said. “It’s no matter. I’ll just find another.”
“And when she leaves? They all will eventually leave.”
Silence.
“Why do you think we have love?” I asked him.
“To hold, to smell, to taste. It is a beautiful thing,” he responded.
“Yes, it is. But… why?”
I’ve spent the past year thinking about love. Not because I was in love, or even looking for love, but because it seems that I am at that age where people get married, and, if you’re not getting married, people ask you when you will. It’s just what is expected. I don’t normally like to do what is expected of me, especially if I don’t get the point of it. Sure, I want to fall in love, but why? For companionship? I’m not saying that is wrong, but I don’t want to do something because I feel a lack of something. What’s the point of love?
All of my life, I’ve been very skeptical of love. Maybe skeptical isn’t the right word. I just have always taken it very seriously. I remember being fourteen and saying, “two halves don’t make one whole relationship. You should never look for someone to complete you, because that someone can always leave you.”
I actually had a ton of reasons to not fall in love, and the older I grew, and the more I saw, the more reasons I added: I realized that I probably had a ton of baggage from the instability that was my home life, and I didn’t want to use love as a coping mechanism. My mother died when I was a kid, and I saw what it did to my dad. I never want to lose someone I love. I’m not sure I could handle it. I know how I am. Once I fall, I don’t think I’ll be able to get back up. I can be loyal and passionate to a fault, and I am afraid of losing myself in another person. There are plenty more reasons on this list. Most of them have to do with fear of some kind. Fear of loss, fear of pain, fear of losing control, etc.
The most recent addition to my list came a few months ago: I don’t want to love anything more than I love God.
I decided that I wanted to love God more than anything. I didn’t want anyone to take any of my affections for God away. Believe me, this was not a happy decision. I remember crying about it, and feeling pretty holy giving it up to God, because I didn’t want to.
So, I gave it up to God, but God wasn’t done with that yet.
I still had all these thoughts about the point of it all? What is the point of marriage? What is the point of sex? What is the point of love at all?
I asked numerous people, and got numerous responses. Marriage is a representation of God. It’s about companionship. Sex is for procreation, or worship, and a glimpse of the pleasure found in God. The love that we find on earth is a glimpse of the love that is found in God.
Hmm…. Well, I thought…. if it’s a glimpse, I don’t just want to settle for a glimpse, God. I want everything that you have for me. I really wasn’t acting in fear at this point. Okay maybe, but the fear was a fear of settling. Why settle for man, when I can experience the love of God?
And then it hit me: The point of all of these things is to love God better, or to understand his love for me better. Yes, marriage is about companionship, but it is also about devotion, and commitment. It teaches us about God’s commitment to us. Jesus never leaves his bride. Yes, sex is for procreation and pleasure, but it is also about intimacy and vulnerability. It teaches us about being intimate with God, and the superior pleasure found in him. There’s a reason why the Bible refers to the wedding night when it talks about Jesus coming for his bride. Yes, love is about butterflies, and laughter, and fights, and make-ups, and tears, and passion, and all the emotions coupled into one, but the love found in this world is just a taste that is meant to wet our appetites for the greater things to come in God.
We got to talk to Ziggy about that love. About the purpose of it, and about God’s love for him.
As we parted ways, and walked back home, I felt the butterflies in my stomach. How amazing it is to know such love and be able to share it with people.
Honestly, I am still not sure if marriage is for me. If I get married, I want it to be because I want to understand God’s love for me better. I want to marry someone who is head over heels for God, and makes me love God more. I would like to be married one day, but married or not, I want to walk as one in love. I want to walk as head over heels, truly, madly, deeply in love with God.
So many people are looking for love in all the wrong places, and I used to think for all the wrong reasons. But… perhaps the initial draw to love is not wrong at all. You want someone, because we are created to be in something that is bigger than us. We are created to be in love. We are created to be in God.
