Open for buisness

I typed an email to a perfect stranger today. Someone I met once and was curious about. I've never thought so hard about how my words will sound from the other end - did I sound too eager? Did I explain my intentions clearly? Did the whole thing SOUND like I'd rewritten it as many times as I had? Words are so tricky, sometimes.

I had an interview for a promotion at work last week. I decided I would just "be myself" and trust God to place me where he wanted me. (Which, I might add, I assumed would be in the position I was applying for.) I answered all the questions with personality and confidence, sure that I was just sealing the deal. Turns out I didn't get it...and now I'm wondering if it was something I said, or didn't say.

What you don't say can get you into just as much trouble as what you do say. That's the tricky thing. Although I can't lie worth beans with what I say, I have become quite adept at leaving a whole lot of other stuff out of conversations - for various reasons, but by the strict line I've always held to I'm lying. Creating secrets. Every time I think to myself, "Maybe I should tell them..." and fail to do so, I've just made a little hidden pocket in my mind. Something I've made a conscious decision not to show. Too many of these and you've got yourself a lonely life - can't even remember where you were when it started, but you backed yourself into a tiny room of hidden things.

But hiding things isn't always wrong - I realize that sometimes we keep things from people to try to protect them. From what, though? From our own personal messiness? Baby, they've got the same thing going on. Maybe we think they won't stick around if they know what's inside us - that we really can't trust anyone to love us in the middle of it all. Could it be that our deepest heart's desire - the one thing that keeps us breathing - is also the scariest thing we'll ever have to learn to receive? Love is a powerful thing.

I believe that it is the greatest calling we'll ever undertake, to "love and be loved" as a friend of mine once put it. "On this hangs all the law and the prophets," Jesus said. And I have to think that you can't talk yourself into getting any better at it - just like every other commandment in scripture, we must move forward with the bold cloak of grace making it possible to stand in the presence of, and indeed to be a bearer of, real Love himself.

Colossians 3:14 says to "put on love." Put it on.

How does that look? It's just that I think it's an impartation as well as a choice. Love came after all of us before we even knew what it was, and now we've got the chance to live right there - right inside it. It ought to be the very heart of everything we say and do - the motivation behind each thought, each moment. It should be what drives us. It's the only reason we're here anyway. He loved us first - and we must spend ourselves learning how to love him back. And how to love each other.

I think love presses in. Real love is obsessed - consumed with going deeper. Knowing more of what's inside - how much more is there to love in there? And the cool part of loving each other is that we find out what it is Jesus is so crazy about - we get to know more of his heart by falling in love with what he is in love with...us.

So I decide love looks like coffee with a good friend today - I hear what's in her mind and I let God show me all the beautiful places she doesn't even see in herself...and I walk out more in love with who HE is because of what he shows me he sees in her. Amazing, isn't it? It's built to work that way. But none of the really beautiful stuff is on the surface - it's just like the ocean. We're built to want the explosion of color and overall mind-blowing beauty of what can only be found in the deepest parts - but there are so few of us who will actually go through what it takes to see it up close, and not just on the Discovery channel. I've got to learn to scuba someday.

But the kicker is that we have to say what we're thinking. Actually let there be words for what we see in one another, and brace for impact when somebody decides to tell us what they see in us. Love puts it out there.

And when it does come, it sort of disarms you. Your heart sort of rolls over, not sure it's ready to get up yet. I can think of the way I've seen myself react to the most abandoned manifestations of love in my world - most often, I just melt down for a while. Kindness, you know? Just a shocking moment of honesty - clarity leaving no room for doubt, and no way around it. I love you. Man, that can pack a punch.

So let's do it. I mean, let's use the ammo. Stop hiding things, stop rewriting our emails and stop imagining every possible outcome and just live with our hearts out. I have to believe that we need more love, not less, to get what we really want. Living with the fear of repeating past pain (and there has been pain) will keep you from so much beauty in life. The most beautiful people I know have loved and been loved - and none of them seem to have much to hide at all. I'm not suggesting we become foolish with our emotions - or that we forget to have "healthy boundaries" - just that we stop filtering every new scenario though our database of "what wisdom should look like." Let's just consider for a moment that Love himself has always been a shocker. Bit of an extreme sportsman from what I can tell. Hmm. Maybe I've been looking for love in all the wrong places.