“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
Mother Teresa
Sometimes when I look across the landscape of my life surveying the times I’ve felt loved or have encountered love it’s often easier to remember the times other people rejected me or let me down or said they loved me but didn’t, not really. There was picking up teams for kickball in second grade, "You take him on your team, no you take him". Was I that bad? Or the girl in high school that I liked who just wanted to be “friends”. That was a bummer. Or how about that friend I ministered with for years who abruptly ghosted me with no comment or explanation .” Come back I’ll buy some breath mints”! And let's not forget all the people I've hurt over the years because of my fear and selfishness. The little girl in third grade who liked me, the guy in my dorm in college that I didn't get along with, my wife of thirty-six years on too many occasions to count. I'm sure the list is as long on the one side as it is on the other but as with all matters of the heart, it's always easier to get in touch with the times others have disappointed me than it is for me to own and recognize the times I was the beast at the door when love came calling.
I have plenty of reference points for pain in my relationships with other humans and even with God, the problem is those "coordinates" won’t get me where I want to go. Like the prince turned beast I’m looking for love because It’s the only thing that can save me and restore me to who I was created to be. I think it’s true for all of us
In elementary school, we played a game while we were walking on the sidewalk. You couldn’t step on a single crack in the pavement. It seems like that would be a pretty simple thing to do since the squares in the sidewalk are so large, but when the cracks in the pavement monopolize your focus the other areas where you step seem smaller and smaller and those cracks become almost impossible to ignore. I can still remember the anxiety I felt when we played that little game. I think our experiences with love can be a lot like that. More often than not heartbreak can leave a bigger impression than authentic love even though it usually doesn't make up the bulk of our experience.
It’s not that it’s wrong to remember those experiences and recognize their weight it’s just that I can’t allow them to define my life. If I do the love that I am made to embody will almost certainly grow cold. Ice cold….as in dead.
When I truly make the effort to look across all the years and begin to sweep away those dry fallen leaves of rejection and disappointment scattered across the decades of my life I’m able to reconnect with those pristine unexpected moments when love found me and other people loved me and were present for me in a way that changed my life and left me changed.
In those moments I always remember the woman who held my hand.
It was a day in early spring and I was going into the hospital for an allegedly simple outpatient surgical procedure. No big deal I thought. You’ll be in and out in a couple of hours the doctor said. But I was apprehensive. I always felt like I could have been a good candidate for a career in medicine except for the fact that I don't like hospitals, blood, needles, sick people, etc. Other than that I would have been perfect. So there I was getting wheeled into the operating room which felt like a refrigerator. Did I mention that I also don’t like being cold? Add that to the above list. There were a couple of nurses milling around in addition to the doctor who was going to perform the procedure. They explained what they were going to do and gave me the injection of the local anesthetic. Frankly, I felt anxious, alone, and scared.
They were in the middle of the surgery when things started going a little sideways. By that I mean the anesthetic began to wear off and I could feel what they were doing. It only took them a minute or two to realize what was happening and regroup but at that point, I was done. At the same time the shifts were changing for the nursing staff and the nurse who had been in the room left and another nurse took her place.
I was lying on the operating table tears streaming down my face feeling very uncomfortable when the nurse who had just started her shift came in. I had my eyes closed in a futile attempt to calm myself down but it wasn’t going well. This nurse came over to the right side of the table took my hand and held it for the entire rest of the time I was in surgery. She never let go of my hand. I never saw her face or even knew her name but what happened in those moments altered me forever.
To be clear, I’ve held hands with lots of different people for many different reasons throughout my life. With my friends: let’s all hold hands and pray. With my children: let me hold your hand while we walk across the street. With my wife going for a walk. All of those times were valid expressions of love and fellowship. But this was something different.
This was supernatural love and comfort at a level I had rarely experienced. If I stop, close my eyes, and quiet myself, I can still remember the sensation. It was an extraordinary otherworldly encounter. What flowed through her that day was coming from a source that was not her because no mere human can be that by themselves alone. She became the very essence of love and peace in those moments. I might as well have been holding hands with God himself and in a very real way I was.
Did she ever know what she became for me in that traumatic situation? Did she feel the magnitude of what was flowing through her? Perhaps not. And maybe that’s the whole point of all of it. When I become love in my way to the degree that he is love, I become a mere shadow to his light shining through me. Like this lady just doing her job in the operating room on a Thursday morning. She was just being herself, and at the same time, she became something much, much more.
She became LOVE.
("Run to Love" is an ongoing series that builds on the ideas and experiences presented in previous posts. Each post can stand alone but things will make more sense if you read the posts in sequence.)
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