Struggle for Love

 

                                  

Over skype and gchat conversations, it seems even some of the closest people in my life back home are struggling to find the fullness that love is supposed to offer.One friend even said he doesn’t even know if he is able to even feel deep love for his own mother.

 

We’re all missing something. Missing a key ingredient somewhere. It keeps falling short somehow.

 

All different walks of life, but it seems that the story is the same…

 

A Thai girl stumbles into the bar Justin and I were sitting at, severely distraught, intoxicated, and frantic. She lays her arms around me, picks up some rice from the opposing table, and shoves it in her mouth sloppily. “He no like me. He leave. I not good enough. He say no like me and whiskey… He always leave. Now alone. Hurt.” She collapses to the ground and flops her legs into the air.

 

Another night, another very serious boyfriend.

 

 

 

 

 

Another Thai woman, telling me her story over a massage: “So how long have you worked here?”… “7 months. I married before. So happy. Husband gone now. Now must work here. Have kids. Must eat.”

 

 

I sat with an older gentlemen for a while at a bar who offered to buy me a drink. I obliged him and we got flowing in a great conversation. He told me his life story… of how he left the states in the 70s to travel the world, and he ended up here in Thailand. He told me of his life here in Thailand, a wife, three kids-7,9, and 31, how he owns a jewelry factory here in Chang Mai…works been super busy lately. “I never come out” he said, “I just needed to unwind today.”  He shared the story of the 31 year old kid…who he’s not sure is actually his, but he was with the woman who built for him a grand illusion of love and sincerity long ago. He says that’s the deal here. Women who’ve been heartbroken by someone, so now have written off the institution of love, and have figured out they can get further and richer by faking love for someone…whether for a night, a week, or a few months. And there’s plenty of expat men running through here willing to get suckered into it. “That’s what happened me” he said, “More than once” he smirked.

 

Even on my team there seems to be a running dialogue of loss, betrayal, feelings of guilt over past break-ups, reminiscing divorces, regret, what ifs,why nots, and where to nows. I’ve personally been seriously struggling with past decisions I’ve made in relationships…trying to figure out reasons they are no more, what I want now, and really asking the questions…who am I in love? Can I love anyone ever? Can I even receive it?

 

Mirages. Illusions. Pangs in the pits of our stomachs. All desiring… all leaving the table starving. All of our attempts to fill the hunger turning up in vain.

 

The struggle is evident, and feels like a losing battle. Somedays it even feels like the whole institution is a pointless and all too painful enterprise to undertake. Why even try?

 

But then I sit with the Lord for a while. Just sit in his presence and be. His banner of love comes over me. His perfection casts out the fear and distraughtness. It reminds me not to worry. That going crazy over it all, and letting my teammates, and the girls in the bars go crazy over it all…is indeed unnecesary. It’s hard though to remember that if we would just start in His Love, the rest of it is so much easier.

 

1 John 4 says it much better than I do:

 

“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”- ESV

 

and

 

 “We, though, are going to love-love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.” – The Message

 

SO… a. When we love, God is abiding in us. Like, very much alive in our physical bodies and in our soul. He’s here. Allowing us to overcome our humanly, fleshly, ugly inability to love well.  To love perfectly…without creating or garnering uncountable wounds and frustrations.

 

and b. It’s all possible because He first loved us.

 

We’ve made it into such a struggle. And by “we” I mean, we don’t just make it hard for ourselves, we make it hard for others to love. The struggle is corporate. Our brokenness and poison rub off on each other. We, as a human race, have made it way more difficult to love than it need be.

 

 

I believe though, that kingdom is coming to earth…to our lives, marriages, homes, and communities. And we are partly responsible for making that happen. What I’ve learned this month is that the very first place to start with the charge to bring heaven to earth is to simply sit inside the sweet of the Lord, which will change me, bleed out my poison, and then allow me to Love others. Anyone. Everyone. All the time. And if we all do this, if we all collectively just give into His love…the struggle is no longer a struggle. It’s a tickle, a chase, a laugh. A sweet, satisfying kiss. Kingdom comes when love is reigning, winning each day, winning in each of us.