I’m a bit of an adventurist. That’s a diplomatic way to put it… “adrenaline junky” might be more accurate. I thrive on the excitement of the chase, the challenge of an unsolvable puzzle, and the dare imbedded in the doubter’s scoff. Love, I think, is the greatest adventure I have ever embarked upon.
It’s a many-faceted and devilishly tricky endeavor, to love another person. The more I learn and experience about what it is to love, the more I discover about what it is to be loved (because sometimes letting that happen is even harder) and how little I know about the whole process after all. And I’m not just talking about that wonderful man I just married (though I am head-over-heels stupid crazy in love with him…). I mean all kinds of love: The love that delights in holding a screaming Salvadorian toddler and considers the 10 seconds of dancing with him to be the highlight of this century. The love that lies in wait in the back of my mind for nighttime to come, that it might grace my sleep with the most vivid and tactile dreams of familiar brown faces, tiny dirty hands, playground romps, and time-out tantrums. The love that longs for love-thirsty places—understaffed hospitals and refugee clinic and the orphan’s heart—that it might plant and grow and fight and defend and catalyze. The love that agonizes needlessly over its requite while two young adventurist fools waltz around each other for a couple of years until they wake up married one day. That kind of love.
C.S. Lewis described the New Narnia as being something like an onion, except beneath each layer was found a layer even greater and deeper and more mysterious than the one before. It is somehow fitting that love is kind of the same way.
I was speaking with a first-time mom the other day, and the topic turned to whether she wanted to have more children. “I know this sounds ridiculous, and I know that I would, but I just can’t imagine loving another child as much as I do her,” she said, referring to the cackling 8-month-old who had just accidentally wedged herself between a shelf and a dresser. “It’s like your world grows somehow… like your capacity for adoration swells to a level that you could not have previously imagined.” Love changes you, grows you, stretches you.
And so that’s my thought for the day. No grand moral; no tantalizingly intriguing query.
But hey. I’m a newlywed. I should get at least one free pass to gush about love and mushy things.
In related news, I hope that you enjoy these love-inspired photos as much as I have.
The aforementioned wonderful man...
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And the aforementioned screaming Salvadorian.
