It's been a while. Sorry! I've been pretty busy, doing some secret planning for something which I cannot reveal until after tomorrow night (and don't worry, I'll have all the details!), and also working about 45+ hours this week. It's been pretty busy and tiring. But regardless, I'm up at 2:10am just thinking about things. I wanted to blog about a book I have been reading called "A Severe Mercy" by Sheldon Vanauken. It's really touched me so far, probably because it's not a fictional book....it's a real life, true love story of two people falling for each other, getting married, and then their journey together to research Christianity and eventually discover Christ. I can't explain how amazing the book has been for me to read....I think partly because I seem to notice myself turning into a "woman," or rather, finally beginning to accepting my femaleness as God created me to be female, and also because I think I am hopelessly longing to romantisize everything in my life right now. lol Anyway, so far, it is a beautiful book, and the author is also a poet, as well as his wife, so he has poetry they have written for each other inserted in the book, as well as corresponding letters between him and his friend, C.S. Lewis. I also think the book is so amazing because it is such a documentation of two pagans (as he even calls he and his wife in the beginning of the book) loving each other and then discovering the greater love of Christ. It's AWESOME! I might even devote my next few blogs to some sections from the book, and maybe make a few comments on them.

For starters, here's one:
"So, if he wanted the heights of joy, he must have, if he could find it, a great love. But in the books again, great joy through love seemed to go hand in hand with frightful pain. Still, he thought, looking across the meadow, still, the joy would be worth the pain - if, indeed, they went together. If there were a choice - and he suspected there was - a choice between, on the one hand, the heights and the depths and, on the other hand, some sort of safe, cautious middle way, he, for one, here and now chose the heights and the depths."

This just got me thinking about what love really entails. Our love for others IS joy to us, but yes, loving someone also means getting close and getting hurt. But, love endures, and it is worth the pain. And, in a sense, God's love pains us, too, but not because He hurts us. Instead, our love for God and His love for us causes us to feel pain because we suddenly live in the world but not of it. We have passions for God's creation, and it pains us to see it breaking. We ache with sorrow for the lost, and we struggle with burdens of temptations. All this because we choose the Great Love. But, it's all worth it. The depths are worth the heights. Definitely. Hopefully more to come from a book I actually WANT to read!!! :)