Who I Am

Just now I was asked by an agnostic "Have you ever been certain you were in love with someone?"  I closed my eyes and thought for a couple of minutes before answering him.  As anyone who knows me could guess, my answer was "yes."  To expand on that, my full response was this, "Yes.  I am in love with God.  In relationships, I desire to find the spouse that will love me in a way that reflects God's love for me.  That, I have not yet found."

For you see, I am still fifteen years old (for a couple more weeks ;) ), and at this age it is impossible to "be certain" that I am "in love" with someone.  I can like people romantically.  I can love people platonically.  I can even love people romantically.  But I cannot, for certain, say that I am "in love."  For this cannot be said until marriage.  When I meet a man whom I can love truly, who has the courage to offer his life to me in the form of an engagement ring, whom I can have the courage to give my life to  through putting it on, and together we can make the marital vows, then, and only then, can I say with complete certainty that I am "in love" with someone.

This is because only when God's grace binds myself to the one whom I love, can I be in love.  Until that point,  I am outside of love.  I can partake in love, I can get my hands in it, I can mold it into whatever design I wish, I can taste it, hear it, smell it, feel it...but I cannot be in it.  Love is in me, and I am in the presence of love.  Love has created me, love defines me, love gives me life.  But I cannot be in love through my Father's eyes, until I have become love.  Whenever I give myself, body, soul, heart,  mind, and spirit to my future spouse, and I take my spouse's body, soul, heart, mind, and spirit upon myself for protection, then, together, we become love in each other.

Whenever I become love in my husband, and my husband becomes love in me, then I shall be in love.  "The two shall become one."  If he is my love, and we are one in each other, then I am in love.  For together, as we build a family, we reflect the love above all love, of the Holy Trinity.  Through my husband and myself loving each other as the Father and the Son loved each other, our children shall come forth from us as the Holy Spirit came forth from the Father and the Son.  Whenever I can reflect the Holy Trinity through my marriage, I can be in love and not just a witness of love.

Now, whenever I told my friend that I was in love with God, but none other, he asked me to take religion out of the picture.  He wanted me to answer his question without bringing in God, so that I could answer his question on the same page that he asked it.  The problem is, however, that he and I can never be on the same page unless we are in the same book, which we are not.  And so, I cannot take religion out of my answer, for my book is my religion.  My life is my religion.  In the words I said to him "There is no aspect of my life where I can put religion aside.  My religion makes me who I am."  And who I am, until after marriage, can only be "in love" with God.