Strength, Courage and Wisdom

I feel the strongest when I'm faith-filled empowered with an unwavering belief and trust in the power of God's goodness. I also feel my strongest when I'm single-minded,tenacious, and exercise laser focus on my goals. Clarity can provide a sense of Strength too.

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Live to Give

There is an intrinsic power in giving. Giving involves mindfulness and pure motive.

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The Most Important Question ... ever!

Want to know what the most important question you'll ever be asked in your lifetime? Stay tuned!

Love is a choice

I’m in love with love. This idea of love in all its grandeur, splendour, complexity, and mystery has held my interest for what seems like an eternity … well at least 48 years of that eternity. Many of the movies that I watch are about love - Love Jones, Shakespeare in Love, Love Story, and Love Actually, you get my drift.

I am of the firm belief that ‘Love’ is a choice. It’s a decision and a choice. Love is also a verb. It’s active that we choose to make and take daily. One of the most beautiful statements about love was written by the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians in which he implores …

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

Love can seem sometimes like that elusive dream or that dangling carrot. Metaphorically love can take on the form a cartoon character like The Road Runner and sometimes we can feel like the Wiley Coyote always chasing the Road Runner only to be tripped up by some folly. Of course the Road Runner always seems to have the last laugh and love can seem like that at times but it can also be unbelievably fulfilling, simple, breath-taking, unbelievably satisfying, pure and true.

Ultimately love is a decision and a choice. Love is not some passive thing but in fact active with ‘legs’ on it. If love is patient, kind, not envious, or boastful, proud or evil, and rejoices in truth and is protective, trustworthy, hopeful, and persevering it definitely takes a major decision and choice to make this all of these things happen. Love is challenging, multi-faceted, and multi-dimensional. It can be like a diamond in the rough where you and I are its miner and refiner.

I've discovered that there are four (yes four) major types of love - Phileo (brotherly and friendship love) and Agape (Godly or selfless love) and Storge (kindred of family love) and Eros (Erotic and sexual desire). I’m sure there are many more types of love as I’d find it hard to believe that love could be so easy to define.

I have met a few people who have been really cynical about life and love but thank goodness I have had the luxury of meeting living examples of ‘love in motion’ who have kept my hope and belief in love alive. As someone who is currently single and who hopes one day to marry I have always been curious how couples who have been happily married for years stay that way. My friends Gladys and Don Webb were married more than 50 years. When I asked them what their secret happy marriage was Gladys responded “we made a life-long decision to love each other and when we took our vows and said ‘til death do us part’ we meant it. We accept each other exactly as we are, we don’t try to change each other, and we live to serve the other person selflessly”. Don shared with me over dinner one evening that he loved Gladys more in that moment than he did on the day they got married. He said “Carol, when I married her she was a quiet little thing and now she is not so quiet and she’s not a little thing but I love her exactly the way she is, I have never cheated on my wife and I wouldn’t even dream of it, I simply adore that woman because she is my best friend and I believe that she is a gift directly from God to me”. I wanted to cry at his simple declaration of profound love for his wife. He told me that “Gladys is holding my hand in this life Carol and God will be holding my hand in the next”. I’m so grateful to have had that conversation with Don because within a little over a year he suddenly became ill and passed away. The good that remains is that Gladys is continually fed by the gratitude and memory of Don’s love and he has passed that legacy of love on to his sons who exemplify and bestow it on their wives.

Ruth and Ron Adams are two cherished friends of mine who have loved and lived selflessly, gently, lovingly, and respectfully for over the 54 years of their marriage. Ron was blind when they met and never had the chance to envision Ruth’s outward beauty but more importantly he had the advantage over many to solely focusing on her inner beauty. While many men of today are bedazzled by a woman’s outer beauty I wonder how many of them take the time to find out who she is on the inside? A waitress once asked Ruth and Ron what the secret to their successful marriage was and they individually replied “Commitment” and “Communication”. I would add selflessness, a great friendship, and a deep and abiding love and respect, true affection, and large doses of humour. Anytime I joined them for lunch I always got the sense that I was in the midst of two great friends who knew each other deeply. I also sense that they truly treasured the time that they spent together. There was an undeniable simpatico or a profound compatibility shared between these two lovely people and sprinkled with their complimentary sense of humour. I believe that great loves laugh a lot. Ron passed away in June of 2010 and I know that he is deeply missed by all who knew him and thank goodness Ruth and Ron’s daughters have found men that love them with that same kind of intensity and the same kind selfless love that their father had loved their mother with.

Love is to be embodied, radiated, and shared lavishly with everyone you can. It’s not to be coveted. But what about the difficult to love? The troublesome daughter, son, parent, relative friend, or coworker? How do we love them? I would suggest to love them in the same way that porcupines love each other… very carefully. And my closing words to you dear reader about love is this … See love, be love, and give love.