I was doing some reading this weekend and thinking about how we sometimes miss the most obvious things. I was re-reading 1 Corinthians 13. I read the ESV, which looks like this:
1 Corinthians 13
13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
And the part about “It does not insist on its own way” really jumped off the page at me. (Some translations show that as “love is not self-seeking.”) That hasn’t always been easy for me in the past. I thought about the rabbi’s book on what is bashert and how loving couples should look at the smaller points of the relationship as, “Your way, my way, who cares.” Let’s face it: that’s not always as simple as it sounds. For some of my Type B friends, it seems easier than for us Type A people. Part of it is selfishness, yes. But part of it is simply being human and wanting to be sure we are happy and our needs are being properly met. No one wants a one-sided relationship. Even if that works for a while in the beginning, over the course of time, it will get very old. I guess it’s a struggle for me to figure out what that balance is. We’re all guilty at one point or another of what we’re not supposed to do when we love someone. As my friend Brian says, “Sometimes we screw up but c’mon. You gotta just apologize for it and move on.” As I was reading, I felt God saying to me, “Don’t forget the opening line: love is patient.” And it was like He was underlining or underscoring it to me as He said it. Again, sometimes we miss the most obvious things. I have made some screw-ups in my relationship with Darcy. I’m not saying he hasn’t either. And I’m also not saying that I haven’t had some times along the way where I thought about pulling the plug altogether. But, right or wrong, I have that poppyseed of love. Life might be a lot easier if I didn’t, but I do. I dunno. I don’t want to be selfish, hateful, or out of control. I want to be better not just for him but for myself as well. Whether this relationship lasts or it doesn’t, at the very least, I’d like to learn some skills to take with me in life. Neither of us has ever been married and we have both been out of the relationship game for a while. It’s a bit like watching someone get back into a sport after an accident. You can see the person’s trepidation and you can see them struggling to rebuild both their mental and physical strength. He’s out of practice on being a boyfriend and I’m out of practice on being a girlfriend. Old habits die hard.
