To love

Now, after surgery, I see that the real challenge begins for me. I can't go back like before and on one side this is very fascinating! The surgeon, as usual was right when he described all possible symptoms as result of the surgery and insertion of the wafers: I have a lazy brain, which occasionally appears as a spontaneous paralysis in the face, or on the left side of the ear, the eye, the hand or leg. It's like a game. Just don't get scared and go ahead and it’ll pass! Another consequence of all this is fatigue, due to the fact that I have to do almost anything with will power although the automatic processes are beginning to kick in and it’s getting easier. I have found that I get tired going downstairs into the kitchen, or doing some cooking or talking on the phone for a long time! There are also a number of funny symptoms and we had quite a laugh! When I am speaking, I can’t find the right words! I make strange decisions: So, the other day I decided who knows why, to clean, the fridge at midnight! I had all the food on the floor! No reason! Then, I wanted to clean the House at 3am in the morning with the hoover! These are the external visible challenges God gives me to love him. I am stripped of all my capabilities, stuck in bed because too weak to move. On the face of it all a dead loss, a waste, what’s it all for? 

And yet there is a totally different way of looking at it: what does it actually mean to love? To love one another as Jesus loved us? If I want to have God’s love for my neighbour I let him live in me. If I live in me there is no space for him to be in me. Looking at and living with Jesus on the Cross I understand that he is with me now and in giving him all the limitations as gift, parcelled up out of love I am left with nothing… out of love. This is the greatest gift God has given me: The possibility to be nothing out of love which then allows him, God Love, to be in me! Suddenly everything becomes beautiful, even the most despairing thing. If it was not for the tumour I would perhaps never be so close to God, if it wasn’t for this period of rest I would never be do what I can do now! But above all, whatever the plan is: It is a plan of immense love by God, and that is beyond beautiful! I realise more and more that I need to make haste to love my neighbour, but that I must make time to love her/him. There is no shortcut to loving my neighbour or God. Love calls for communion, for sharing and that needs time. Often I find I presume the other person living the same spirituality, the same faith, knows what’s it all about, but that is not the point. God is not in a hurry to love each one of us and that’s why I only have the present moment! Why, then do I rush from one neighbour to the other often causing havoc with my superficiality? If I loved in peace knowing that all is always in God’s hands, the other person can love me back in the same way and then..we have Jesus present amongst us! What better guide! 

My challenge for today is to make the time to love, to be attentive, to be still. There is nothing to be done or accomplished other than that. For if I truly love, things will happen as love always expresses itself, and that’s God’s task. 

All these external, practical things are only the external signs of the love of God for me and us. I only have to be attentive not stop there. And for this I need my brothers and sisters because in the communion between us we can see clearly! And if I mess up? I can still love, starting again and again. There are many opportunities to offer everything to Jesus on the Cross as my token of my love for him. Then my life is one of communion which is rich in the unexpected gifts from God.