Love brings life!
At my son’s wedding, I toasted him and his beautiful bride. I held up a rich and robust bottle of wine and I began to pour it into a wine glass. And as the glass became full, the wine began to spill over the sides.
Here was the toast: “May the love you have for one another be as rich and robust as this wine, and may the wine glass of your marriage not be able to hold all of it – so that this life-giving love will spill over and bring life not only to you, but also to those around you --- your children, your family members, your friends, your neighbors, your church, your co-workers.”
When a couple experiences this type of love, it is very life-giving. Certainly for them, but not just for them. Do you know what I mean? Have you ever been around such people? Just being with them brings life.
[By the way, my son and his wife are doing a very good job of working at making that toast a reality in their marriage. Love brings life.]
I hate to keep hitting on the same theme, but I think the weeds metaphor is a good one.
The bottom line is this --- the most unhealthy / destructive weeds in a relationship are those that choke off the life-giving quality of love.
Some of these weeds are pretty easy to identify --- for example, the common addictions (alcohol, sex, drugs, gambling, porn, spending) clearly carry destruction with them. If you have loved someone with one of these common addictions, then you know what I mean. It is tough to be in love with such an individual --- the love between you is continually choked off by the addictive behavior, and the life-giving quality which that love is meant to have gives way to ruin.
But not all unhealthy / destructive weeds are so easily identifiable. Case in point.
I come from a strong athletic past. Sports (especially basketball) were #1 in my life. When I was still playing in college, I didn’t ever really talk about it explicitly with the woman I was dating (the woman who is now my wife), but nonetheless I think she knew that deep-down she was #2 in my life.
Well, we were married shortly after college and we headed off on this adventure called life. But an interesting shift began to happen. Slowly Kathy became less and less willing to play second-fiddle to sports. She no longer wanted to be #2. I would insist that she was #1, but she was unconvinced.
I began to look at my behaviors.
Imagine that Kathy and I have a date night planned, and that I want to go play a little basketball after work before we go out. No problem, right? Except on those nights when I have played 2 games and the wins have been split. The rubber game decides the winner. But if I stay for the rubber game, there is a good chance I will be late for our date night. But I can’t leave with things tied. Dilemma. On more than one occasion, I stayed for the rubber game. I was inevitably late. Kathy would suggest that I loved basketball more than I loved her. I would disagree. We would be at an impasse. (You can imagine what these date nights were like!)
Imagine that Kathy and I would go on one of those date nights and end up at a sports bar where the televisions provided more distractions than a reasonable man could reasonably be asked to ignore. Kathy, of course, would want to talk, but I would frequently be less interested in what she had to say than what was on the televisions. (You can imagine what these date nights were like!)
[By the way, let me say unequivocally that the opposite of love is disinterest.]
Imagine that Kathy and I would agree to start the day with a cup of coffee along with some hearty conversation. But also imagine that I was fairly intent on reading the sports page or watching ESPN to catch up on the latest sports news. After all, a lot can happen in the world of sports while the rest of us sleep. No problem, right? Just multi-task. (You can imagine what these starts to our day were like.)
And imagine that children began to arrive on the scene of our family life, and imagine that I was repeatedly more concerned about playing / watching / dissecting sports than I was about being attentive to my wife and my children. (You can imagine…..!)
Attention and love are closely entwined. You can tell a lot about what a person loves by watching what gets their attention.
I had an attachment in my life that was choking off the life-giving quality of the love in my marriage and in my family. This attachment was not nearly as easy to spot as might be a drug attachment or a gambling addiction, but its consequences were nonetheless destructive. My obsession with sports was like a clinging weed that repeatedly stole my attention, robbing my love for Kathy and my children of its life-giving quality.
Solution: I made the decision that I would not do sports. So for over a year I did not play sports, I did not watch sports, I did not read about sports --- not because sports are unhealthy, but because my attachment to them was unhealthy. That attachment was robbing my marriage of the life-giving love that I had promised on my wedding day.
Recently one of my sons commented that as he was growing up, it was difficult for him to understand how I could love sports so much and yet be so detached from them. [You have to understand --- I still love sports. But I can also walk away from them. They don’t have the hold on me that they once did.] This son is married and has children, and as he has rightfully taken on more and more responsibility, he has had less and less time for playing / watching / dissecting sports --- his love for his wife and children is evidenced by the attention he is giving to them --- and he is now coming to understand how I was able to love sports and yet not be constrained by them.
Love brings life! This is what most of us desire --- to love and to be loved in such a way that life flows from the experience. The difficulty comes when the clinging nature of our attachments short-circuit the flow of that life-giving love.
