Let me do the work of love, no matter how hard. Never mind if it's not instantly rewarding; it is infinitely more interesting.
I've been thinking, off and on, of something I once read: The purpose of marriage is not happiness but holiness. Never having been a "good" Christian despite my many attempts, I couldn't understand this line of thinking. Having been raised Catholic, I understood "holiness" to have as one of its main ingredients suffering — and why even want to get married if to be successful at it means to suffer? But these words never left me, bobbing up every now and then from the flotsam and jetsam of my brain. Until, one day, it dawned on me what the statement meant for me. On that same day, I also realized that I do want the gift of marriage. In fact, that is my Christmas wish this year. My view is not a biblical view, but I don't think it strays too far from it. To be holy is to be set apart from others, as God is, in his perfect goodness and righteousness, in his perfect love (yes, this is biblical; yes, I know I said I wasn't looking at it biblically). The
Why am I reminded of The Haunting of Bly Manor. Will maybe re-watch.
ReplyDeleteMaybe because there's a line about the work of loving someone in Episode 1: "To truly love another person is to accept the work of loving them is worth the pain of losing them."
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