something out there

Sometimes I don’t feel like I know what the word love even means. Is it even a word? Or is it a whisper? Something we hear quietly calling our name in the deep and the dark? Something we find when we least expect it; when we let the noise around us dissipate into blankness and hear the stillness of our hearts speak?

What does it mean to love one another?

Is love an action; a feeling? Is it something I do; what I say? Is it a thought process? Is it an inevitability of falling or is it a choice?

In the end, all I know is that I know nothing. And I think that maybe that’s what love is all about. It’s about realizing that, though you yourself are not less, there are things out there that are much bigger and greater and grander than you; things you don’t always need to put a finger on or understand.

I think love starts with humility. It is that little pinch of pain you feel when you bite your tongue. It’s the friction that comes from swallowing your pride. It’s the resistance in your heart when you choose to forgive. It’s a lot of different things. We don’t have to define it; we don’t have to put it in a box.

Because if God is love and God is an incomprehensible being, more than we could ever even think to imagine, then isn’t love more than we could hope it to be as well? Isn't it bigger than all of our ideas about what it should be?

For me, there is comfort in that; comfort that there is something covering me that is bigger than myself. God and love are things that are bigger than my thoughts could ever attempt to wrap themselves around.

Sometimes I look up at the night sky and take in the moon and stars and the blue-blackness and I think about how big it all is, but it doesn’t make me feel small. No, I look up at all that vastness and I just think about how big it is, and how the God that created all that beauty and all that wonder made me too.

And then I think about how even when He has all of that, even when He has the sun and the moon and the stars and the sky, He still chooses me. I mean how crazy is that? A God who has everything, who created everything, who created all these beautiful mysterious things also chose to create me and to love me.

But still, I don’t feel small. I don’t feel big either. I just feel ... loved.

And I can’t explain it and I can’t trace it out. I just know it. I know that I am loved beyond measure. And I know all of this because the stars and the moon and the blue-black sky tell me so. And so no matter where I go, no matter what land I find myself in, all I have to do is look up at the moon and the stars, or the rivers and the mountains, or the sun and the flowers, or the valleys and the snow, and all of it reminds me that I am loved.

Moment by moment, God reveals more of what love is. Each day I am stretched and broken and renewed. Each day I am tested. And each day I come closer to understanding how I can help others to see the stars and the moon and the blue-black sky the way I do. How they can look at these big things and still see more. I mess up a lot. Sometimes there are clouds and they block the light of the stars. But I know that God can work with that. Just because there are clouds one night doesn’t mean the stars aren’t there. And it definitely doesn’t mean that God stops the dusk from arriving the next night. He gives the stars another chance. And heck, clouds don't interfere with the sun, they just make for a beautiful sunset.

So I hope that I can keep growing to be the kind of person who lives in such a way that doesn’t make others feel small, or even big, but just that I make them feel loved. That people would be able to look at me, a part of God’s creation, and see Him and feel His love.

That’s all I really want.

photo via (we heart it)