The Point of Friction

Part I:

Love for me was a feeling, an emotion that a person had for the thing he loved. I thought that emotion was the indicator of how much you loved someone or something. I have since redefined what love is and learned that there are actually two stages of love. Love is deviating from your own nature and desires and tendencies for the sake of showing your beloved that they are valuable and worthy of honor. The first stage of love is euphoria and the second is commitment.

The first stage of love, euphoria, is one where you have a ridiculous amount of positive emotions towards the person you love. These emotions give you superpowers and a compass that points directly toward your beloved at all times. It makes love (going out of your way to show someone else honor and value) easy. I don't care that the time I get to spend with her is shorter than the time I'll spend driving to get there. I don't care that it's satan o'clock in the morning, let's keep talking. I thought that the most mature form of love was a state where that emotion was always present. The euphoria of love is something that comes on initially at the beginning of a relationship and then ceases to be so pervasive and powerful when reality strikes like a blindfolded kid who swings a golf club at a piñata and hits you in the face instead. The euphoria is not gone forever at this point. It will resurface at times, but it is generally indicative of the beginning of a relationship, not the culmination. There is not an advanced stage of love in which the euphoria returns and stays forever.

The second stage of love, commitment, is the stage of love where you have a chinese fire drill and choice punches emotion in the face and takes the driver's seat. It is a stage where the euphoria is gone, in which you must make the choice every single day to love. And the act of love is one whose foundation is one of selflessness and deviation. This love is not necessarily motivated by the euphiroa that wipes away all faults and inhibitions and enables you (for a time) to be absolutely selfless, disregarding personal desires and convenience for the sake of your beloved. This love does not have the euphoria to sustain it and is therefore more difficult and more real and more valuable and more rewarding than euphoric love. It takes guts, true sacrifice, self-control, and selflessness. It shows both the lover and the beloved the depth of the love between them and shows just what kind of person the lover actually is when they're running on regular choice rather than high-octane euphoria.

Now all of this is not to say that euphoria is bad or wrong in any way. I'm simply saying it isn't to be relied upon in the long run. It should certainly be harnessed when it shows itself, which it will from time to time in any loving relationship, and things will more than likely be grand when it does, but it should not be the focus or goal of the relationship. Relying on euphoria to run an entire relationship is like relying on a Zenvo ST1 to take you snowboarding on Mt. Hood. It will be an absolute blast in the foothills and you'll ask yourself why the world even manufactures other cars until you hit real-life things like potholes and gravel and elevation and snow. It's fantastically reliable Italian engineering will cause it to break down, the $20,000 carbon-ceramic brakes will need to be replaced, you won't be able to see behind you, your passenger will be forced to hold the snowboards out the window and carry the gear in their lap, you'll crash, and everybody will hate you. At the same time, when the Zenvo appears in your driveway one day, you'd be an absolute idiot not to drive it. Because it looks like this. And has 1100 horsepower. And it's being driven in Dubai, which is the opposite of Mt. Hood.

Part II:

I have been placing my hope in euphoria with my relationship with God. I have been desiring that feeling, that passion, that euphoria in my relationship with Him, thinking that it would be the representative indicator that my relationship with Him is deep and full and real. I was sorely mistaken. The first stage of love for God occurred for me when I was very young. Four years old. It really did not last long. No matter how I feel about that, about hte justice or equity of that fact, it happened and I've struggled with it unconsciously, unknowingly, for years. I have been living and searching for the euphoric love for God and have been angry and disappointed when He doesn't provide it like I thought He promised. The relationship He promises to those who believe Him is much different and much deeper and richer than just a feeling. Loving God is not like a drug you take when you're feeling spiritually dry. Loving God is not "being in love with Jesus" in the sense that I and mosof my peers understand it. It is not serving the homeless in Portland or going to Swaziland or Cambodia out of a blazing passion and emotional draw to share Jesus (and the euphoric love that He will give you) with the world.

No. Loving God is living day to day, following after Christ, our beloved, and seeking to be more like him. That may find expression in ministering overseas, but it does not have its basis and foundation in a euphoria, in a romantic love for Christ. It can and should (in the long run) have its basis and foundation in a commitment and willingness to sacrifice even when we don't feel like it. A ministry built on that will be far more meaningful than any emotional decision to follow God's calling.

God showed me that I have had the second sort of love for Him for a long time. I have had the steady, deep, serious commitment to deviate from my own desires to honor Him. I have had the most desirable kind of love that one could wish for and said, "Is this all that there will ever be?" I have been foolish and ridiculous and immature, wishing for the very beginning of love rather than basking and glorying in the deep, committed love He has allowed me to have for Him. I have despised His love for me and asked for that which will not be sustaining. I have despised the gifts of financial and familial and academic wonders which he has bestowed upon me and asked instead for emotion. Ah emotion, you fickle, hateful, beautiful feeling. How sweet yet how fleeting you are.

When I sat and wrote about this subject for hours last week, I felt as if I had unlocked the secret to life, love, happiness, and relationship. And God has been teaching it to me for years. He's allowed me to live in the second stage of love with Him without me realizing it. And he has blessed me immeasurably through it all with countless and wonderful blessings. The creator of the universe did all of that in my life.

Wow.