Time to Fall In Love

Ave Maria:-)

What makes you and me tick? what makes Obama....your rowdy ,bossy neighbor.... family, friends...celebrities... men on death row..the man on the moon if there was one -- what makes them tick?

Will venture a safe guess.... L-O-V-E.... either one is full of it... recieves and gives it  or lacks sorely love --- hence life based on this premise  is either a Joy or Absolute Misery.

No one could possibly exist ... be sustained and live with some measure of goodness and sanity, reason and nobility without ever having experienced true love... and the higher we are able to reach this level of goodness --- the greater the probability that we have recieved, understood -- been immersed in love... truer love equals greater, immeasurable results.. of the lasting kind.

In our younger years... we tended to romanticize love .... in our time (gosh this sounds so dated) we might have started with Nancy Drew/ Hardy boys -soon found out walang love story masyado don ... found our way to the Mills and Boon Barbara Cartland romantic sagas --- wished and mooned over meeting our own dashing Romeos who would sweep us off our feet -- we'd run out of breath from sheer delight and happiness --- and yes , we dearly believed in the Walt Disney bylines  :

"And they lived happily ever after...." 

Awwwww...s-i-g-h..... sabay faint hahaha....And then as we grew older..we discovered the bestsellers .. oops ...this meant sexier plots ... with  lots of action adventure to spice it up... Little by little , thru the books we sensed the very colorful life out there.

... in the big ...wide world.

And then we decided to have our own Love Story ---uhhh is it stories?... hahaha ...plural talaga becoz for many souls it had to be that darn Trial and Error route...with majority experiences at the Error side. whoops.

And what did we learn along the way??? That I pray to God young ones...the younger generation learn faster than we did  that real love is not icing and cake... fluff and frills...not heady mist and perfume....no solely laughter and song.... oh no.... when we truly fall in love ... we could get our hands dirty... our faces smeared with our tears... our backs and bellies aching.. and our hearts constantly tugged from the sheer pressure of love. Pag-ibig nga naman.

We rub our eyes to see that the true Romeos are the ones who never leave your side... who love you for the right reasons ...who still love you even if it borders on being unreasonable.... who bring out the best (in you)... the good in you... and help you shine ...shine a light that is divine and touches the life of others in a beautiful way.

We are amazed that when we realize we too pala can love with such a depth, width and height --- to think we only fancied ourselves forever vain, selfish , petty, precocious -- iyon pala when we fall in love -especially with GOD.... this love touches all other loves we will have in our life --- so much so that  even if we didn't want too --- God's love heals and strengthens, transforms and changes us in such a way that we do things we would never ever, ever dare to do NOT IN YOUR WILDEST DREAMS talaga .... Yet ...we gingerly begin this new love adventure...Our feet get wet... and then our hands...bodies... until our whole being gets immersed in the love of GOD.Hallelujah...it only gets better.

Sometimes we are frustrated becoz we want to perfect in one snap --- to please GOD Who is our LOVER... but the Lord Himself hushes our fears... reminding us gently that He is the Patient One..and that He can wait for us.... forever if it takes us that long to love Him back.. to love Him with obedience and complete surrender.

I'll just fast forward to snippets of life ... how we find out soon enough that Christ's love has changed us.

-- You become content simply beholding your loved one... or embracing your loved one whether he be spouse, child or brother...  gives you that incredible joy ( never mind what the trials of the day were but just one embrace replenishes you) --- you just know you are too blest to feel that way --- parang the love in itself is a REWARD and you could not care less if they returned it or not... WEIRD right? sinabi mo pa .

Weird and true.

-- Many cause us pain... it's easier when we deserve it meaning ..we did something very wrong or we hurt them first so it's sort of ok that they hurt us ... but when loved ones Just Want to Hurt you for whatever errrr Valid Kuno reason they have...then it is so very painful... Yet becoz you love them nga... you bide your time, you wait for guidance from the Lord how to deal with them... you pray for the grace to understand where they're coming from becoz if you don't mapapatulan mo eh and how to forgive them-- and you don't want to be drawn into a conflict superbly planned by the devil.

-- Maybe it is really true love that hits us when we are content with simple joys... simple , unexpected manifestations of love.

-- And it is also love when you are willing to sacrifice your own share of attention and care from the person you love so that this person is free to minister to others without you holding him/her back... (Pls donot take this to mean that if you were married..you'd allow your spouse to have a fling..hahaha ... nope it don't work that way)

--- what I mean is that Christian love is a love shared.... Jesus was not possessive nor exclusive.. He died for all, He openned his heart to those cast out by society. He loved us so much...He shared His Spirit with us to enable us to love others as much as He did. 

-- If we listened hard enough ... or no... better put...if we quieted our hearts enough and spent time to pray ... just a simple leaning on Jesus and yes passing on all our cares to Him , we would feel Him holding us so close to His side... and we would literally hear music in our heart, in our mind... in the world -- it's not music as we know it ... just a sort of music of the soul that enables us to carry on..no matter how difficult the challenges be.

--  it reaches a point where when you know of people who are truly graced by GOD and who can touch the lives of others in a special way -- you gladly give way...or try to assist this person... basta you don't want to stand in the way or in Tagalog we say ,ayaw mo maging pabigat.... You just want this brother or sister to succeed in His/her mission to share Christ... And when they do succeed you are just as happy as they are anyway.. perhaps even happier. Weird again right? Sinabi mo pa. hahaha. GOD IS GOOD.

Gotta go thanks for reading till the end ... nawa ay lalo nating matanggap ang pag-ibig ng Dios sa pamamgitan ni Kristo Hesus. Time to fall in love, now na... See you when I see you...hugs   :-) ta mye