There is a Definitive Answer to That Question
Why Can't Life Be Like a Love Story?
Why can't life be like a love story -- hearts pounding, endorphins blazing, constant smiles and laughter.
There is that happy, awkward silence when the love spills over and overwhelms, and when eyes repeatedly meet with giggles and a shy, quick bow of the head.
There are glances given mirroring longings for . . .and desires that surge into slow-motion, squeal-inducing kisses --
Blissful and endless moments of romance with perfect prolonged sighs, Aww's, and capturing of one's breath.
I sometimes feel cheated when I watch life in the cinema. They throw in a few roadblocks for the young couple and twists that are meant to make you worry and anxiously cheer them on. But because the romance is portrayed so sublime along the way, you never lose hope but what they will end up together, and you're always waiting confidently for that happy-ending kiss
Life seldom is a made-for-movie proposition and even less like a love story. That does not mean that life cannot be full of love. It needs to be and can be. It's just that life is a lot messier, and love is never given by a script that is seeking to entertain, move, or motivate us.
Love writes its own script. It produces an unpredictable journey that is full of potholes of weakness, hills to climb to build strength, rainbows to provide color, hearts that need warming, a blue sky of opportunities to look up to, and a sea of endless dreams and possibilities. Love is about choice -- having it, holding it, and keeping it dear -- protecting it for ourselves and allowing others their choice. Love comes through service and sacrifice and seldom comes instantaneously in its purest form -- "Charity suffereth long. . ."
Life is about loving -- just not a movie.
Life might not be like a love story, with the ending showing the good-looking and happy couple going in for their scripted, passionate kiss.
But life can have passion and most definitely is about love.
At least that is what I know -- until I watch the next cinematic masterpiece. Then I sigh, "why can't life be like a love story!"
-- Janice Osei-Boamah --
Dealing With the Weakness
I like this little piece that I wrote, rather on the spur of the moment, because it often depicts how I feel. I struggle to extract myself from the lovely, played out stories in the cinema from actual life at times -- and thus, with the gathering of minutes into hours, I watch stretches of life pass me by -- because I'm not wanting to participate in the harshness of the real world.
Escapism at its best. I love my Korean and Chinese dramas.
But sometimes running away leaves me standing by. I don't like the idea of me being a stander-byer.
I, like most people, dream of being a better me -- and withdrawing, does not place me at the forefront in the fight to offer an alternative to harshness -- love and tenderness.
I call it a fight because it feels like a fight. Life is hard. Pain is real. On a daily basis, we all find ourselves fighting to put aside our own pain to treat one another consistently with the restoring and elevating benefits of love and kindness.
So Very Much has Been Written About Love
With everything that has been said and written about love, you would think we would all have a perfect grasp of what love is and how to give it and obtain it for ourselves.
The pens keep getting put to paper with poems, prose, and stories defining love -- expounding upon it and giving it a prominent place in the world’s songs and literature.
Within my own words, I freely acknowledge them to be inadequate in revealing the meaning and definition of love and in giving direction to what people are starved for -- love.
What we lack in the expression of our feelings and in the definition of love can be found in holy scriptures. The words of God are wherein love is displayed, understood, and exemplified.
Pondering and acting upon the scriptures can expand our spirits into all kinds of splendid things -- humility, personal repentance, an enlarged capacity to love and forgive, enhanced happiness, and deepening of our faith in Christ's atonement.
The World Takes Love Apart, Making it Confusing
I believe we get caught up a bit into thinking there are different types of love and wanting to categorize love and place it in bits and pieces -- mystifying its meaning. There is a so-called friend’s love, family love, couple love, etc.
I believe there is one love -- God's love.
How God Explains Love
I Corinthians 13:4-8.
4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8 Charity never faileth. . .
There is a lot about God's definition of love to comprehend, but the thing that stands out the most for me now -- is that God is asking us to change. Love is about repentance. Love is about using the atonement of Christ in our lives to purify ourselves and thereby purifying our love. I don't read even one of the characteristics of love listed above without knowing that to gain that attribute; I will have to go to my knees and let the spirit of God work within me to bring about the refinement of my heart. It looks like work -- a lifetime of work.
Whether in this life or the next, married, single, alone, or surrounded by people -- love is about repentance and our Savior, Jesus Christ.
A Tower Tall Enough to Reach Heaven
When the people in the Bible were working hard to build a tower tall enough to reach heaven -- when the Lord confounded the language into languages, only the language of love was left intact as a universal language. Only the language of love creates understanding between hearts and minds.
Love was left intact as a language, I believe, perhaps because God wanted humankind to have means to communicate with each other in his language. Love given in its purest form -- unconditionally, is unsurpassed in clarity, meaning, and in its ability to build tall towers of love and understanding -- reaching to heaven -- making our homes, communities, and world a "heaven on earth."
My New Year's Resolution
This year, my goal is to love God first and then myself more fully and strive to see more what God sees in me. I desire to extend to myself and my brothers and sisters more of the love, mercy, and tenderness that God has so generously shown to me.
I marvel many times that he knows who I am -- that he gives the most unbelievable blessings, and that he continues to love me even when I struggle to love myself.
If the God of all the universe and "all things that in them are" could take note of me and bless me with the wonders of his love, then I can love and support and cheer on myself more and do more of the same for his beloved children who walk the path of mortality with me.
So, how do we find love in the year 2021 -- we go to where love is. “Come unto Christ” -- “feast” upon the love of God -- “without money and without price.”
A heartfelt Happy New Year to you! May your year be bursting with love.
Affectionately,
Janice
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