A couple of the students were asking what it meant and I explained it. I talked about my first real relationship. I talked about how quickly I fell in love and how much it hurt when she broke-up with me, how great it felt when she came back and how much worse it hurt when she left again. It was a couple of months before I was ready to date again and then I really wasn’t ready. I went through a series of insignificant relationships. I never dated a girl for more than 3 weeks and immediately broke-up with them if they started acting too lovey. When I started dating the future Mrs_theGeek she pursued me. She was cute and seemed nice so I didn’t push back. She told me she loved me and I literally told her she didn’t. It took months before I would let her say she loved me and months more before I said it back.

I had been broken and hurt even without sex. That’s the thing with relationships. We get involved and get hurt and don’t want to be vulnerable.

The change in my life didn’t come from the future Mrs_theGeek. I would have run the first time she said she loved me if I hadn’t already changed. God began a work in me. It didn’t change me completely over night but with time I become vulnerable again. I stepped out of my fortress and opened myself to Love.

God is good and He wants us to be open and vulnerable because we need Him and each other. That takes openness and vulnerability.

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For one human being to love another that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof; the work for which all other work is but preparation.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

Love is eternal where lust is temporary. This is a plain and apparent fact as easily seen as the nose on my face, which is quite noticeable from even a great distance. The problem comes when one confuses love and lust. Often people claim to be “in love” only to “fall out of love,” but in truth they were “in lust” which is as easy to fall in to as it is to fall out of. Consider the relationship between a parent and child. This should be our basis for understanding love because it is our first experience with love. Each party must fail severely and often before love might fail. Parents who truly love their children do so regardless of the choices the child has made and regardless of how painful those choices might be. Often terrible parents are loved by their children regardless of how much it hurts for that love to not be returned. Imagine if all relationships were so pursued.

Since love will always outlast lust, the lover must take time for lust to fade so that love might grow just as a great tree must grow slowly until the weeds around it die and it can be in full sun and grow great and true; then nurture that love through respect and care. Only after those first joys of lust have passed will a couple experience true love in their relationship, the kind of love that exists beyond the hurt and pain.

It is also true that love is patient and perseveres in all things. This is why waiting for love is the only way a relationship may endure. Often a person says to another, “If you love me you will …” but the truth is that if love exists, it will be patient and forgiving. Lust demands instant gratification where love will carry through to the end. Lust is a sprinter that expends all his energy in seconds while Love is in a marathon race and she knows to keep an even pace throughout so she will not tire too quickly or stumble in the many rough places along the way.

This is why so many relationships fail, love gets confused with lust. When those feelings of joy and giddiness fade the energy of lust is spent while love is just getting started. Love must be given time to grow in the absence of lust or it will never reach its maturity. This is a difficult process because lust is passionate and intense driving a couple to spend time together where love is kind and gentle liberating a couple to their own interests. In this, individuals growing in love must overcome themselves and spend time with their love so they might experience a deeper understanding of love. If the lover were to say to the beloved, “I just do not love you anymore,” the lover is lost in confusion. The lover meant to say, “I no longer lust after you.” Love is an endless ocean and lust is a desert wash. The rain will cause the wash to overflow and rage intensely but once the water has flown into the ocean the wash cracks with the desert heat. Follow the water into the ocean and love will never run dry.

In this season of love, consider that love gives while lust takes. Take the time to seek out the gifts of love. The gifts of love are not available at the store but can only be found in time, empathy, and compassion. These true gifts thrive in love but suffocate in lust. When you look into those special eyes and say, “I love you” please do not lie to your heart.

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