Growth

My mood for the past few days must be disgustingly gagging from the outside looking in. If I were someone else having an average day and I accidentally had to have a conversation with myself yesterday... I think I would have taken the nearest loaf of bread or pillow or even a wrench and shoved it down my throat.

Why the cheery mood, you may wonder? Or perhaps by now you've joined the invisible majority that seems to feel that I'm just a ball of sunshine all the time. For the record I'm not, though sometimes I try, but I always fail. Sunshine is dull without darkness to accentuate it.

So... moving on, I shall employ a ridiculously overused metaphor and discuss this roller coaster of my life. A few days ago I decided to take an enormous yet almost necessary risk and tell someone really close to me just how deeply I care. After months of hesitation and refusing to go over the edge, I decided to just take a dive and see where I ended up. So I flew down the thing right onto a ramp that's sent me soaring to a new height of happiness that I didn't know existed. I guess you can't reach it until you start believing that you can. I know that sooner or later I'll crash back down. Hopefully I'll land on the rails again but if not, it was worth the ride anyway. (End of cliche metaphor.)

I've learned a great deal about love this year. In high school, really. Impossible lessons to summarize, but far more valuable than I ever realized at the time. The greatest has finally struck me now, at the very end. People have always told me that love sneaks up when you least expect it, and I never believed them. They've always told me that it grows from the foundations you build in your life and that one day you just stop and realize that it's already there. Deep down I never believed that the time was right for me, though I convinced myself that it could be. I had a vision in my head and grew frustrated when it didn't match up with reality. I hurt people who didn't deserve to be hurt all because I refused to trust my own understanding of myself. I hurt so many people and did things I can never take back, and as much as I wish I could heal the pain I caused I know that things needed to happen that way. How else do we grow? God knows I've grown... I've got so much left to understand, but in the past few years I've formed my own conclusions on things I never dared to see before.

Life is growth, obviously. It's one constant progression of little epiphanies, when suddenly tiny pieces of the world click together and the picture grows brighter. Self-actualization. Understanding. Recognizing gifts and sharing them.
Faith in one another, oneself, and above all God.

Love, too, is growth. It starts with a tiny seed, the miracle of two individuals seeing within one another a shared value or belief and forming what we know as friendship. And as the years go by and the people reveal more of those beliefs, something deeper grows in their hearts. Mutual respect. The recognition of faults and the constant care in spite of them. Forgiveness. Sacrifice. Love is like coming home - that comfort and that simple peace. It doesn't always erupt suddenly from some new excitement, though I suppose at times it can develop from that. It depends. But often love creeps up from beneath the laughter and smiles of two people who know each other inside and out, in spite of faults and merits. It peeks in and shines through their eyes gradually, building the foundation of something stronger than they understand or even see initially. They can sense it at times, more and more, and then somehow they understand that something greater than themselves has formed. The beauty and power of simple acts becomes clear to them, and suddenly all the prior beliefs fall away. Illusions shatter and they see the truth captured within the joy of a simple glance into each others' eyes.

After that the fears start to fade away. Of course there are doubts, and moments of anger and frustration... but at the core of it, something deeper remains. Something that outlives momentary anger, and pain, and even life itself. Even if the love fades away, the essence of its power lives on within the lives of the people touched by it, and it returns to God. God is love, and love is the growth of something more powerful than man can ever explain, though we've tried. Even now these words are dismal attempts at capturing elusive emotions that I will never be able to define.

But these are my reflections on life and love and growth, for the moment at least. I give thanks for the love that has touched my life within the hearts of those around me, and pray that others can do the same and let go of any anger of the past.

I don't know who even sees this blog anymore, but I hope you find the peace that I've found. You can tell me that I'm completely wrong in every way, and that's fine - but for God's sake, form your own conclusions on it. I've spent too many years looking to others for definitions and guidance that I should have found within myself. This is my experience with love, and I thank God for it, and for this day. This is my experience in this moment.

Now go live for yours.