The Truth Is

Turn on your radio and put it on scan. Mark down how many songs are about love. I bet that 80% of the songs on the radio cover this common topic (the 20% being Christian music, which covers a different love and rap music talking about God knows what), in fact one may say that the world is obsessed with love. Love is barely even noticeable behind all of the make-up put on it today. Movies and music, games and behavior, goals and social lives: All are centered on love; but love has been reduced to romance. Everything seems to be centered on finding the “one and only”, or just having sex to make yourself feel good. That’s what it seems to be all about doesn’t it? The commercial world we dwell in tells us that everything is permissible, and good, as long as it makes you feel good. Love will make you feel good. Love will conquer all your heartache and messed up tendencies. Love will fill that longing, aching heart you have in your chest. Well, I guess they are one to something, but they got their forms of love all screwed up.
The truth is that I am so tired of living for that kind of love: The kind of love that will never be enough to fill; the kind of love that will end up giving just as much hardship as peace; the kind of love that is centered primarily on me. The kind of love that we see advertised is a feel good love, and a feel good love is not true love at all. A feel good love is a love that will always disappoint and will always come up short because, well, we don’t always feel good, do we? I have been in a few relationships, and have seen many more, and I can tell you that rarely does a relationship evolve past this mentality of “I love you because you love me”. I have seen people give their hearts into relationships just to realize that the other person never loved them. I have been in a relationship centered on feeling good, and, although it was a great experience, it just was missing a certain something. Love is missing a lot of something, at least the love I am sold on TV and in Music.
“I’m so tired
Of livin’ for
The kind of love
That only comes and goes”
The truth is that I am tired of love and how it is thrown in my face everywhere. You go to a family get-together and they all ask you why you don’t have a girlfriend. You go to work and the people wonder when you’ll get married. You go to church and you see things like singles groups trying to hook you up. You go to a bar and you expect to hit on a girl. It’s everywhere. The opposite sex is the most important thing in this world to a high majority of people in the West, but what happens when you find that special person? What happens when, 2 years into your marriage, you stop feeling good and happy when your wife spends too much money? What happens when you lose everything banking on marriage you thought would last forever?
The truth is that I am tired of false love and its promotion by damn near everyone. A great man once said “This is true love: if a man is willing to die for his friend”. When was the last time you saw someone sacrifice themselves for someone else, and not to feel good about it or make amends, but just because they needed it. True love is as rare as an eclipse in a world searching endlessly to find it. Instead, we get wedding chapels in Vegas and a divorce rate over 50%. Where the heck did we get so far off course from what it meant? Well, the truth is that love has always been something of highest importance, and that it has always been sought fiercely. I have a feeling that this wandering is nothing new, just like most things.
I am so tired of living for this love, but my heart is still aching for a romance. Where shall I find solace from the whispers of my heart in a world that doesn’t know anything of real love? The arms I run into are getting harder to find, yet I search none-the-less. Precious Lord, abide with me.