the inconvenience of love

yesterday morning, i went to church, like a good little girl. i always end up feeling refreshed & re-grounded. a combination of nourishment for my spiritual self, combined with the familiarity of the traditional service. something i have heard since long before i have conscious recollection. i have attended church hundreds of times. and though the orders of worship have varied & evolved, and the church buildings themselves are unique from one another, the same familiar parts are still present. not to the point that they have become habit, taken for granted, but that they are comfortable & reassuring in their familiar existence.

i sat in the pew, and felt myself exhale in a deep sigh of... inner peace. and then i turned my attention to the sermon. when i was a child, the sermon felt eternal. they aren't really written with words & ideas that are easy for a child to listen to, and the messages are often lost on the short-attention span of youth. and let's be honest for a moment: we're supposed to pay attention at church, but some people are better speakers than others (not that we should need to be entertained, that's not what we're there for) and there are times that... the mind wanders. ::shrugs sheepishly::

i had a point here. and my occasional moments when my thoughts stray away from the sermon were not it.

ok, i was in church & the sermon started. Pastor Goff began the sermon with a little story to illustrate his message. it was about a man who brought home flowers for his wife every day on his way home from work. while this seemed like a wonderful gesture to express his love, the fact was that he was able to get the flowers from a vendor right outside his office building. they were cheap. he didn't have to go out of his way. he didn't even really have to think about it. he just handed over a few dollars, the vendor passed him a bouquet, and off he went. that made what appeared to be a thoughtful action less so for lack of effort. would the man have brought home flowers for his wife if he'd had to go out of his way?

the statement that really locked me in was this:
Love is not about convenience.

it started a train of thought rolling through my mind. love is as much, if not more, about what we give than what we get. love often can mean sacrifice. it can mean giving up something we love or cherish for something we love or cherish *more*. it isn't always easy, but its value makes it worth our effort. like the man who stopped for flowers only because it was a convenient way to "earn points" with his wife. the true sentiment gets lost, when he gives flowers simply because they are convenient -- and how much more they might have meant if he'd done it less often, but the trip was out of his way, where he might have spent a few more dollars and had to put some thought into his selection? how much more would it have illustrated his love if the extra effort had been worth it to him?

shouldn't showing the people we love be worth going out of our way? worth the extra time? the extra energy?

by that same token, it's easy to simply say the words. but "I love you" is empty without the actions to back it up. you can tell someone you love them, frequently even, but if your actions -- or even your lack of actions -- do nothing to demonstrate your love, what good are the words? the value of "I love you" is not in the words, themselves. i've found they speak the loudest in silence, when your actions of love speak for themselves, but you want to actually give them voice. once again, the effort lies not in the saying, but in the doing. the effort. the time. it's easy, sometimes even mindless, to let the words spill out, but less so to devote the effort required in preventing those words from becoming hollow.

no, love is *not* convenient. and i don't think i would ever want it to be. i should be so lucky as to have people i love, that being "inconvenienced" is a pleasure, and that the opportunity to be "inconvenienced" to express that love is a blessing. easy? not always, but definitely worth it.