I have no idea how this will come out.

I pulled onto the interstate, heading East. The only thing breaking the silence echoing off of the interior of my car was the British voice of my GPS, telling me to merge. I was finished. Another semester under my belt. Another GPA recorded, another week of finals finished, complete with little sleep and lots of reeses pieces and coffee. My car was silent, but my mind was screeching, in competition with my racing heart. My eyes, covered by my knock-off Ray Bans were painfully dry and swollen, a sure sign of the episode that had been the night before.
I was terrified. Absolutely terrified to enter battle.

"I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism."
-Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love

I love this book. I'm currently reading it for the second time. And when I first read that quote, I probably wore my pen out, underlining, starring, and boxing it in. That is me, in a nutshell. But not just with guys, with everyone.
Over the Christmas break, my mom and I somehow got on the subject of my childhood one day. I can't go into too many details, but my home is toxic right now. For all involved. It was a morning of hurting one Saturday specifically, although nearly every day was. The moment I woke up, Satan met me at the foot of my bed, following me into this conversation with my mom. At first, it was just comical things I used to do. e.g. when I would wake up in the middle of the night, needing to use the bathroom, I would ask my mom every time (she would come with me because I was still very young) if I should flush the toilet because it was so loud to me that I was afraid I would wake someone up. When I was done with nap time in the afternoons, I would knock on the INSIDE of my door, checking to make sure it was time for me to come out. It is embedded in me. I don't know if one would call it love, compassion, or insanity, but it is in my genetic coding.
It was then that the conversation took a turn for the hurt.
I love my older sister dearly. But lately, she has been the topic of conversation on the lips of many people back home, and that day, with my mom, was no different.
When discussing the nature of my sister, my mom said she could tell from a young age that my sister always wanted to please people. She had a hard time sticking up for herself, of going her own way. And so, she prayed and prayed for another child to come and take care of her: eventually producing me. She compared me to Samuel, declaring it was obvious that God had dedicated myself to Him.

In that moment, I couldn't decide which emotion was going to win. Anger, confusion, frustration, and just heart breaking pain. Because lately, the gift of love has felt like the heaviest burden, acting like the invisibility coat in Harry Potter: consuming me completely. The only way I even know how to express it is exhaustion. Spiritual, emotional, mental exhaustion. Love's not supposed to feel like that, right?! Why me? Why. I don't want strive to show perfect love anymore, especially when I had just convinced myself that even from birth I had no other choice.

And yet even in the most desperate of times, even in the most desolate spiritual deserts, Truth breaks through, usually in people around me, no less. I am reminded that Love is always worth it. Not the love that says, I'm going to do something nice for my friend today, I'm not going to give a dirty look to that nasty girl that I don't like, I'm going to call my mom. No, the Love that sits with a women who prays to die so that she can no longer wake up to her life. The Love that sits and tag teams the burden that's on a best friend, whom you love, when his heart is breaking from the weight of his love for another woman. The Love that comes back when everything and everyone around you screams to run away. THAT is Love. And that is what we are meant to be. I believe without a shadow of a doubt that that's what Abba intended. But it is the most difficult thing to even consider doing, and if done incorrectly, if done while relying on my own strength and will and selfish considerations of what I will get out of it, I will fail. I have failed. I will become burnt out and angry. I only know because I have done it. I was stuck in that desperation for too long. Abba is that Love. All the time. He is the example, He is the beginning, He is everything.



p.s. I have a best friend. He is a mirror of myself. A reflection of who I often become and who I am, bringing me back to the feet of Abba. Yea...you should be jealous. I'm very often humbled by his existence.