Not Empty

One year ago today, at 6:32 pm exactly, my baby boy Simeon was born.  The first thing I thought when I saw him was "He's wonderful!"  You may believe that to be a standard reaction to a new born baby by it's mother, but in my case that is not true.  My first thought about Malachi was "He's big!" (which is ironic because at 7 lbs 12 oz, he was the smallest of my babies, but since he was the first one, I didn't know that).  And, I'm sorry to say, but my first thought about Israel was, "He's different...."  If you've seen all my boys, you know it's true of him.  He doesn't really look like either Aaron or me, or his brothers.  We've even joked about the hospital accidentally switching him at birth, but I told Aaron that even if it were true I wouldn't care.  I've had him this long, he's mine now, and because of more than blood. 

On a day like this I feel a fierce love for my boys.  It's a tangled sort of love, all intertwined with other emotions like pride, anger, joy, and frusteration.  I look at their existance with wonder, and yet I take it for granted more often than not.  I enjoy their rambling conversations as much as I am irritated by them.  I am proud of their strength and wildness, and at the same time, I find it trying and exhausting.  I love them with all my heart...and at the same time no one makes me angrier than they do.

But this is what I know to be true: because of them, my life is full.

Choose

I recently watched the movie Keeping the Faith.  The basic story is that a priest and a rabbi both fall in love with a girl from their childhood.  Obviously, priests don't get married, so falling in love was a real problem for the character in the movie.  He talks to a friend and mentor, a fellow priest, about his doubts.  He wonders what it means that he fell in love with a woman when he made a vow to God to remain single.  He wonders if he is really committed to being a priest.  He questions what he has always believed to be his calling.  The older priest reassures him.  He tells him that in the forty years he has been a priest, he has fallen in love probably once a decade.  Not to say that he acted on those feelings, but he had them all the same, and the potential was there.  He then makes a statement, which I thought to be profound, "You cannot make a real commitment unless you accept that it's a choice you keep making again and again and again."  I was struck by this nugget of truth embedded in a movie that, to be honest, managed to poorly represent both Judaism and Catholicism (just my opinion, of course). 

The old priest was speaking of a commitment to God, but I think it really applies to any commitment, and especially that of marriage.  It seems to me that in this day and age people are quick to make promises, but not so quick to keep them.  They say "forever", but they mean "for now." 

Let me just say that I am quite a romantic.  I love love stories.  I love the idea of having a soulmate and "true love" and all of that.  I love fairy tales.  But I also know that while love may initially begin with feelings, it continues with choice.  Many people don't realize they're choosing, but they are.  In the beginning it is easy to choose because all those new butterfly feelings of love and infatuation are there as a buffer against bad things.  As you go along though, life sort of beats that out of you, and you have to fight for those feelings.  You have to choose first and then feel, instead of the other way around.

I have always felt very strongly about marriage being a lifelong commitment.  Not temporary.  Not as long as I feel like it.  I made a promise and I intend to keep it.  Promises don't seem to mean much these days.  Promises are used as fancy words said to make other people feel good.  Then as soon as that promise becomes inconvenient, it suddenly becomes okay to break it.  After all, you have to do what makes you happy, right?  Wouldn't want to have to make a sacrifice for someone else.  Certainly not.  Wouldn't want to have to do anything that might require you to die to self (haven't I heard that somewhere before?)

So, bottom line:  choose.  Choose to keep your promises.  Choose to do what's right over what's convenient. 

Oh, and P.S. if you are reading this and having trouble in your marriage, for heaven's sake fight for it!  Don't just give up.  Just because it is hard doesn't mean it isn't worth it. The most valuable things, the things most worth having, are always the most costly to us.

The Rose

A Rose; red, soft, smooth
Made so by the rain of love.
It glows, radiating with joy.
Never has beauty such as this been equalled;
Love has magnified the rose's elegance.
Indeed, some say love caused it.

Another rose, perhaps the same,
Withered, dry, in the sun,
It's petals falling one by one.
The waters of love are gone
Replaced by empty pain.
And the rose, once beautiful, is dying.

Will the rose yet live?
Will the love and rain return?
Or shall the rose come to it's end,
Never again to love, never again to live,
Only lying wilted in the sun,
Dying slowly, mourning its lost beauty.

Love may come,
But none know when,
And none know how;
Perhaps in the rain,
Perhaps in the sun.
Only the Maker can know the rose's future.

This is a poem I wrote in August of 1999, when I was 15 years old.