good-bye, mi vida...hello Life

I loved you once.  I love you still.  My emotion seem to make me ill...

Who put this notion into our heads: "Never give up on someone you can't go a day without thinking about?"  What does "never give up" even mean?  I've often found that people take this to mean you shouldn't give up hope on a relationship that deeply impacted you.  But what if giving up, or more accurately letting go, is exactly what you need to flourish?

In today's societal atmosphere, we find beautiful the love stories that endure, the ones where two people, however different, make the relationship work.  But because of this, we too often fail to realize what's staring us in the face--that perhaps the person you have fallen in love with isn't the person you should love intimately forever.  Maybe this person would end up being your unraveling. (By the way, I'm speaking to the unmarried.  Marriage is a binding and beautiful covenant and should not be corrupted)

I want to be in a love story.  I forget that I already am.  I'm in the greatest love story ever told, for I am His and He calls me beloved.  As I was sitting at dinner today with my roommate, she stopped, paused, and said in a quiet voice, "Thank you for loving me."  I thought about this for a while, and thought wow,  nothing like a deeply committed friendship to show you what future marriage between a man and a woman should look like.  I don't claim to know the secret to love, but I do know one thing: you should be with someone who wants to be with you, who lets you in.  And you should be with someone who is stable enough to love him or herself.

I don't give up on people, period, but maybe a long-standing emotion you have for a particular person isn't meant to do anything else besides point you to Christ.  People are beautiful, but something beautiful that is not left to become wilts into the shadows of darkness.  Stepping back from someone who you love but who you also want desperately to change can help you understand that love, although transcendent, can only bind you forever to One.

It's more important to be with someone who complements you than compliments you.  With flattery and camaraderie we often tie each other up in emotional attachment, but with it we string lies and deception that are uncovered only when the former disappear.  Love turned poisonous is deadly, and it is Satan's favorite weapon.

So here's to saying good-bye to what was in order to understand what is and anticipate what is to come.  Cling to what is good--love love, but let it not be perverted into a choking agent.
You may not end up with your first love, but the past you carry with you.  It is not a burden.  It is a testimony.  It is power.  It is forgiveness.  You'll always have Paris, my friend, no matter how much pain and suffering your heart endured, and that, is something worth keeping.