words for wednesday {page 11, stability}

“But feelings are flickering flames that fade after every fitful stimulus.”

Lewis Smedes

We are not our feelings. And our feelings won’t last. I am an "I’ll never be happy again!" or, "I am so happy I’m going to explode" kind of person. I love this quote because it speaks reason to me when I’m submerged in volatile intense feelings. Intense feelings use up litres and litres of energy and I feel gushing loss of control. It’s a comfort to know they won’t linger forever and equilibrium will return. A truth for the blue days, and for the high days.

Ben and I have been reading a book on marriage and this chapter was fabulous on how passionate and electric new-love inevitably fades but is met (with the investment of time and will) with the satisfaction of being known and loved for the long term. Sometimes we get thoroughly freaked out by looking at all the marriages that started out just happily as we did, but didn’t last. So much of our family. We wonder, are we just thoroughly naive about how bad it’s going to get? 

But eventually we have to stop wondering and worrying that one day we’ll wake up and not want to be together. We return to making that daily decision to love again. Something stable, something tangible, something a tiny bit like our Maker’s commitment to us. 

“For it is in giving that we receive”

Francis of Assisi

“And in the end,

we were all just

humans,

drunk on the idea

that love,

only love,

could heal

our brokenness.”

Christopher Pointdexter