Inconvenient Love

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, today is Valentine's Day, and mine started before the sun was even up in the sky this morning.

Yesterday, we had a blizzard where I live and we got a lot of snow, so I needed to dig my wife's car out this morning so that she could make it to work.

At 6:00 am, it was cold and still snowing. My lungs hurt as I shoveled for almost two hours to free her vehicle from the grips of the snow and ice. In some places, the snow was almost 3 feet deep, and I had to stop every few minutes to catch my breath.

There were a lot of other things that I would've rather been doing right then, but - in a way - it was exactly what I wanted to be doing.

All that time shoveling gave me a lot of time to think. Today, I will send flowers to my wife with a heartfelt message again declaring my abiding love for her. But you know what? It's pretty easy to do that. It doesn't take much effort. It's convenient.

Shoveling that snow this morning wasn't convenient. I had to get up well before my wife did to make sure that her needs were taken care of. It took a long time. It hurt. It was inconvenient.

And as I was shoveling and thinking, it struck me that one of the hallmarks of true love is that true love isn't convenient. It's inconvenient.

It is easy to think within ourselves that we love someone. And because that feeling within us is always there, we come to believe that that love is very strong and that those whom we love should find it obvious that we love them. But that's not necessarily true.

Just because we tell ourselves over and over again that we love someone doesn't mean that we love them. Love isn't merely an emotion that we feel. It is a heart-born action that brings that which is within us to the surface.

I can think silently and unbeknownst to someone about how I love them any time I want to. But that's convenient, and that's not true love. True love speaks to us from within us that we must unwrap what we feel within us and declare it to the one we love, to demonstrate it even when - and perhaps most importantly when - it is inconvenient for us to do so.

I'm sure my wife appreciated the fact that I shoveled her car out of the snow this morning. And when she receives her flowers today, that may for a few moments fill up her vision and warm her heart. I hope it does, because I love my wife very much.

But when it is all said and done, I have realized that it is not just the special days and special things that matter to her most. What matters to her most is knowing that I love her because I show it to her even when it hurts me to do so.

G. K. Chesterton once wrote "an inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." What an adventure true love can be when we consider it so.