Love

"If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.

Love doesn't strut,

Doesn't have a swelled head,

Doesn't force itself on others,

Isn't always "me first,"

Doesn't fly off the handle,

Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn't revel when others grovel,

Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always,

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back,

But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled...
We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love."

-1 Corinthians 13, The Message

I'm learning these days what it means to love. I don't think I ever love like this, not really. I usually remember how I've been wronged, I definetly get angry and don't put up with anything that upsets me, I have trouble trusting God. I want to learn to love in a way that cares more for others than for myself. I want to be able to put aside my pride and just love. Everyone. Why is that so hard to do?

This picture was taken a couple years ago at the "Emma Rhen" park at my home church. Emma was 2 years old when she died, but boy, did she know how to love. This little girl used to throw her arms around my neck with the sweeteset hugs you've ever felt that said "I love you and I trust you." I want to love like a child does, with reckless abandon, not fearing rejection or hurt, just loving no matter what.

Emma was the reason I became a nurse. She inspired me to care for people in some of their most vulnerable moments, to love people through the good and the bad. I'm blessed that my job almost always ends with the good, with new life coming into the world, but not always. I also get to love people in some of the most desperate and painful times.

Although lately I've been unable to pick up my camera to capture the life around me, I'm working on a project at work that will allow me to photograph the sorrow of loss, giving validation to families that yes, their baby did exsist, to send them home with the only physical evidence of a life that never fully came into existance. I get a chance to practice love in the most raw and emotional of settings, in a place where my comfort will be the last thing on my list of needs.