I don't know if it is the time of life in which I find myself, or the vocation into which I seem to have fallen, or maybe it is just me. But whether as an adult with experience, a parent of young adult children, or a case manager facilitating teens with troubled histories, I seem to spend a lot of time thinking about, and listening for, and offering thoughts on love.
What does love do in a life? Can we pick it up and lay it down, like a tool or an activity? Does it light up our lives, always? Is it sweet? Does love always look the same in every circumstance? What does love ask, demand, require of us? What are we allowed to ask of love?
I have found that from time to time love squeezes. Sometimes this feels reassuringly close, sometimes uncomfortably constricting. Is it while I am growing into love? Is it support until I am confident enough to live full in love? I have been wrapped snug in love, and I've been bruised by it.
For me, the knowledge that has become bedrock truth to me over years is that love stretches. It abides in a heart that contains it; but through the very exercise of it, love expands. And the heart stretches. And that enlarged space contains more and more compassion, and more and more passion for goodness in the lives of others. And I know this to be a wholly good transformation of the heart. But there are times that the stretching will ache, too.
The Advent heart, home to Love, continually shaped by love. Stretched, and squeezed.
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