Incapable of Love

You live your life, looking out with longing-- desperately trying to find someone to fulfill a void inside yourself. You're lonely, you long for company... but the harder you try just seems to make the reality slip further and further away and you're left alone wondering why.

It's because of how I look, she says.
It's my personality, he claims.
I don't really want to be with anyone right now anyway, they say defensively.
But at the heart of them, they're desperate: willing to take the first offer they get, hoping that someone will eventually love them.
Even though they don't love themselves.
Even though part of them wonders how anyone could ever love them.

And they failed to realize the most important thing:
If you don't love yourself, it is impossible for you to love another. You may experience lust, infatuation, extreme devotion, ... but love has to come from purity. And this vile way of thinking of yourself can never result in something as beautiful as love.

It originates with the start of Love. Love is Triune because it has to be to be love. Love is not focused on self or gain but rather on the well-being of another. Love is a selfless giving and it must be a relationship. However, love is not toxic or limiting. There is no end to the supply of love but rather in the presence of love it flourishes and expands and grows. Love reaches out from a relationship based on giving and creates life. To have love, all three elements must be present: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

Love can't start from a place of need. You cannot love if you are desperate for that reciprocation. You are too focused on your own self and your own desires and needs to ever understand what it'd truly be like to love the one you claim your emotions to. It's narcissistic in a creepy masochistic way. It's saying: even I'm not capable of positive feelings towards myself but I'm going to stake my worth on your opinions of me, knowing that it's not possible for them to be positive. That isn't love.

Love is not exclusive. Getting super caught up in the presence of each other that you lose all connection with aquaintances, friends, family, what have you is just... cultish. You are your own person and as great as love is, you do not need them or their love to live. They are not your life line: Jesus is. Making someone your everything is idolatry and leaves you with a very unhealthy dependence upon them as your object of infatuation. Your relationship becomes toxic as it focuses on worshipping each other and yourselves. When something comes in to break that relationship apart or widen its boundaries, it completely shatters the relationship. Whether that be a death in a family, an abortion, distance, loss of work, changing opinions, ... strain comes in. But because you're so isolated from the world, you don't have anything to steady yourself. There is no life support. So, down you go. One final fall. A romanticized pernicious interaction.

I'm so sick of hearing people say things that rely upon fixing themselves before they'll be good enough to receive love. BS on that! We are loved. All of us, totally, truly, and forever. We just have to accept that we're worth it. We're good enough for it. That fixing our faults is great but it's not a factor in determining our worth. So stop acting like it does!

You cannot love until you've been loved. Well, we are loved... we just need to admit it. Not say it, not roll our eyes and move on with life... but to realize at the core of being that we were created by Love, for love. And I'm sorry, but until you realize your worth, until you stop checking out that scale, until you stop feeling sorry for yourself for not reaching your ideal version of yourself... until it stops being about you and starts being about God, you are incapable of love.

And we wonder why the world is in moral decline.

Poetry: Girl Made of Porcelain

I'm a girl made of porcelain
Simple as can be
You can set me on display
Or play for hours three

If you set me down
You'll not dust me
But I'll last forever
On display only watching

If you play with my body
You'll discover the hardness of my skin
But the fragility upon dropping
Only by harming me

My face is set and unchanging
If it scares you there's nothing to be done
If you think it pretty I thank you
Too often I am an object of angst

Alone on an a shelf I ponder
At the hollowness of my shell
The paint on my face that scares you
The cotton dress that feels wrong

I did not choose to made into this
I was not present at my birth
The doll that is regarded as regal
But is played with next to none

Some see me as old-fashioned
Some see me as lacking all worth
Still others just see Chucky
Or a step from foreign birthing

I've been around for a while
But I guess I'm getting more rare
When once people knew how to see me
Now there's confusion; I despair

I'm a girl made of porcelain
I know what I am
Your inexperience has not changed me
Just left cracks in my stone

I am what you see
Nothing deeper to discover
Your voyage to know me destroys me
Leaving rumble in your hands

The life I was given is not easy
But it's what I have to hold
I was created for a reason
So don't lay me in the attic alone

Poetry: Darkness

Mist swirls all around
It isn't night
But it feels like it

Was that thunder or my heart?
Cold wind gushes against my skin
Like tiny fingernails scraping away the flesh

Walking along, trying to find the light
Sounds erupt around like bloody vengeance is here
There's no clear way to see

Walking along, hoping the ground I tread is safe
Fearing a disastrous strike at any moment
I cling to myself

The only thing I know
I shiver along, racing
Quickly darting eyes left and right

Malicious laughter fills the atmosphere
I pause, look around
No face to be seen

"You can't go this way
You have to follow the rules
Do as I command"

Since when are there rules?
Who is the voice in the sky?
How trustworthy is something that I know nothing of?

The atmosphere gets tight
Howling in the distance
Rain pelts down, drawing blood

A

I scream
I resist
I fight

It gets worse and worse but I think I finally can see the sun
Not so far away
Just a little...

Perhaps unattainable
Perhaps just a dream
But I know what I saw

There is nothing here like the light.

B

I bow
I crumble
I submit

The rain quiets down
As it falls my lungs fill with coldness
The light and heat of my soul shrivel

Forget the cold in your coldness
Forget sight in the blackness
Forget passion among the heartless

Becoming one with the night.

Poetry: Trust

Do you?, I ask.
Staring back at me, dumbfounded. I guess the mind's not made up yet.
Cause you shouldn't.
A quizzical look flashes in the eyes.
I'm dangerous.
Disbelief sets in.
If you let me in, if you trust me? I'll break you.
Reassurance settles in to the skeptic.
I guess I'm not very believable. I guess you'll just have to see it. How I wish it didn't have to be.


Do you trust me?, I ask.
Why should I?, you retort.
I guess the message finally sunk in.
Anger boils over the face.
My fear of proximity was eased away only now to be founded.
I see your eyes, sir. Resentment has made them bitter.
How bittersweet candor may be.


I accept my falling

Poetry: Mantra Genius

So here we are, in this cultish setting
You dictate the day, time, hour
Okay that was a bit repetitive but
Control the finances, the location, the theme
Stating the values with no views in-between

It was decisive

Managing my affairs, my clothes, my hair
You'd tell me when to blink
No need to ask when, where
It's as set as if it was writ in dark ink

Like a blood oath there's no avoiding it
A brotherhood chosen before there was a chance to see any different
Living in a dark cave below the ocean floor
Told haunting stories of the mighty water roar

Following along because no option was told
Born to lead?
Nah, I'm strapped to the floor
No need to worry, I listen to what you say
The voices of others all get swept away

One day when you're spying
Making sure that I'm reliable
That your views have permeated inside my skull
I repeat what you have said
Time and time again

It's my personal thought, I say
I've come to a self-realization
(Not knowing it was by your dictation)
Swoop in and praise me
Tell me how proud you are that I've learned

I'm intelligent, you say
Because I live my life your way
I'm told that I'm growing, maturing
Becoming what I'm supposed to be
How should I know that I'm missing the sea?

Eventually you'll let me out of the cave
A missionary of retrieval I'll be
Take more of them back with me
Turn them into us
Let's grow our damp colony!

Out there
In the bright yellow sun
Shocked by the light never 'fore seen
It blinds me
It must be wrong!

These surface people
Tanning and dancing and laughing all day
There must be something wrong
This isn't right
This isn't how it should be

Persistently I demand them to join
Refusing to believe intelligence in their denial
I'm intelligent and I know the mantra
I repeat it
I argue for it
I can't be on the wrong side

Life in the minority
That's what Jesus called us to be!
So this opposition is just support
Everything I see further proves this point
You wouldn't lie to me

These poor others
Outside of our zone
No understanding of our varied rules
That I claim as my truth
I've obeyed since my youth

Stranger
Listen to what I say
The same words told the same way
A constant flow from us
We're pounding out this diction
Ain't no fiction
So belong to our persuasion

See me now

I fit right in