The box was white and flimsy. It was the cheap kind of box one always finds surrounding something a little more valuable and a lot more fragile.
I opened the box and saw the mug, white with shadows, nestled onto it’s cheap protective cocoon. I drew the mug out of the box and inserted my right index and grasped it firmly.
The printing on the mug formed a saying I was well acquainted with. Its color, font, and style closely matching the inked in message I bear about on my right forearm. It is a reminder to me and a suggestion to others. Love Well.
I was happy to receive the cup. My wife and I wanted these as gifts and perhaps to sell. We don’t own the rights to the saying. We didn’t even make it up. We simply adopted it as our mission statement as a family. Love Well.
The custom mug came at an odd time. Seriously odd. From time to time I have a crisis that takes place in between my ears. This is one. No one causes it. No one can help to cure it. It simply is except most of the time when it isn’t.
Not too long ago it was thought that if you struggled with such a crisis it meant your faith was weak. Maybe God can heal cancer, maybe not, but depression and anxiety are easy stuff. If you pray and God doesnt take it away your faith walk is somehow defective, broken, or even bogus. They never would apply those same expectations on a real illness or injury.
So here I sit, knowing that hundreds of people have accepted that I am commited to love and to do it well. Usually I do. Today everything inside of me fights against that. All the people I see today will he loved. Those I see tonight will be. Mostly everyone whose path I cross will somehow be loved as much and as well as I possibly can. None of them can hear the screams inside my head of.”leave me alone!” and only the few that follow my blog will ever be aware.
Love, Jesus style love, costs something. Not like Christmas gift costs something. More like it takes a withdrawal from your emotional and intellectual savings accounts to love well. Especially during those times when you don’t want to.
I don’t know if Jesus ever didn’t wanna love. He was love. Sometimes I think I am too. Then today happens and I know I have a long way to go.
simplecelt 