LOVE WITH
Love is with us. Love is with you. It’s with me. It’s with them. It always comes and it sits and stays. It doesn’t pull us further along than we’re ready to go. It doesn’t rush us out of a feeling or into a moment. It gives us space to stay a bit longer, and when we’re ready to run ahead, it moves quickly to meet us where we are and where we’re going. Love does life with.
I played soccer my whole life and I loved it. most of it. or a lot of it. And while playing soccer, when my team was defending, the person who was closest to the ball would step closer to it knowing that her teammate was with her. A forward would attack knowing her other forwards and midfielders were with her. If one person was out of position one would yell “hold!” and (ideally) her teammate would hold as well as she could to allow her teammate to catch up or get into position. As all of these moving parts are coming together, there is communication like “wait” or “man on. check your shoulder” and eventually, “I’m with you. I’m coming. I’m here! Pass me the damn ball!” And as I look back at transitioning and every moving piece, I realize how we were all working to be with each other. Even when there was a break down, and one or two people were caught out of position or the ball was lost, everyone else would shift and communicate and respond accordingly. with each other.
This is true for how love moves with in life. My same teammate, soul sister, bff, that would yell “Step! (meaning move toward the ball) I’ll cover” on the soccer field is the same one who, in our post-grad adultish lives, has said “Go for it! I got your back!” or “oop. I see something you don’t see. Drop back so you can see it too.” She can do this because her love is with me. We don’t live in the same room anymore or the same city, but because love moves with us, we don’t have to be.
This is what I’ve leaned (still learning) about love in life: It meets us in our sorrow and “holds” for however long it needs to, and when it’s time to get up, it says “okay, where we goin’?” Like my soccer team, every person living in love is moving with another person or people. There is no one person at the center, around whom all move, but an equal exchange of love with that is fluid like water and constantly transitioning in a beautiful rhythm of coming, going, stepping, holding because we are all participating to be with love.
This holiday season is particularly challenging - there’s more sickness, more loneliness, more fear, and, at the same time, I have never experienced love with so strongly in my life. It’s in the phone calls to check in and the Face-times looking at my smallest nephews forehead. It’s in the cherished in-person moments that make me collect every drop of togetherness. It’s even there when I’m alone, and I feel the weight of the brokenness of the world, knowing I’m not alone in that feeling. It’s in the words in the books I’m reading lately that remind me how beautifully complex and wonderfully human I am. It’s in the conversations over coffee about how confusing and exciting and scary everything is. And it’s even in the tears that carry me to sleep as I feel myself wrapped in the love of the One we celebrate this season. The One who left Heaven to enter into this crazy, broken, lovely, tragic, incredible, brutal - incredibly brutal world to fill the Earth with joy. Do you see the love with you? Do you feel it? I promise if it’s not in plain sight, it’s in the cracks of the floor or hidden somewhere in your junk drawer. It came to meet you and find you sitting in the dark. Love is with you and it’s with me too.
