All You Need Is Love; Love Is All You Need

Do you ever feel like you have to learn the same life-lessons over and over and over? Like Jethro Bodeen, you repeat the sixth grade countless times? Yeah, me too. Of course, this wouldn't be the case if I would just get the point the first time around.

The latest in my litany of lessons is Love. Not love, but Love as in "God is." 2011 was a tough year around here. Many of you know about just a few of the things that helped it earn that descriptor, and you know what I do when life gets overwhelming? I focus on the overwhelming of course! I rant against the wrongs. My faith gets crowded out by the problems that surround me. I don't want to do this, but it seems to creep up on me, and before I know it, I'm in that place yet again - a shrinking shadow backed into the corner by a bully.

As it happens though, God turned out to be the walls of the corner into which the issues and circumstances of 2011 backed me. I'm still in that corner, but I've realized (finally) that He's there with me. I've realized that I'm hopeless and helpless to change the situations and relationships about which I've ranted to Him. Isn't that encouraging? Yep, it is. Because now I can work on letting go. I can willfully bring these things to the cross - not in anger, frustration, and fear but in surrender. I've realized (for the hundredth time maybe) that "apart from Him, I can do nothing." I can't carry the responsibilities I have at work. I can't love the people in my life. I can't even enjoy any part of life without Him.

And I've realized that the most important thing I can do on any given day is to let Him love me. With that as my foundation, with Love as my constant companion, I can do life. I can work. I can play. I can be patient. I can even love others. Yes, I think The Beatles had it right: all you need is Love . . . with a capital "L."

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