This Love Business

Love is like a train without a schedule. She comes along, sits idly. When she goes, she goes. If you are lucky when late, hop on and break the window; but hop on, you must.

I want to speak in third person. I want to write a poem so no one feels sorry for me. I have taken a sabbatical from writing. A forced sabbatical. Because I don’t feel inspired but I feel a lowly rage.

I write when I have been lucky to capture a butterfly alive and x-Ray it. All I do, is report her anatomy. Inspiration is that butterfly.

Tonight, there is no butterfly, just an urge that must be obeyed.

I have been watching Downton Abbey. I am eating up this show like hot hot cake. I am Mary. Or maybe I like to think so. Then I am Edith or maybe I like to think not. I am Tom. How can I be the flower everyone wants to be intrigued by, the sister no one wants to love, and the servant who prized away the favorite daughter of the whole house?

I suppose the point is that these characters resonate with my fears and my hope. I want to be desired and wanted by as many as possible. I want to hold on to affection even those that I will not follow up on. I want to milk her gaze for as long as honesty will allow.

I’m a diva? Oh, yeah maybe that is the word for it. Sheesh. What does that say, a guy being a diva. A guy longing for attention. I recently told my date that I have come to a very sober conclusion about myself — I am not a gentleman. I want to believe that I am gentle but I am not chivalrous. I didn’t memorize what is expected of a man, and I have little desires to go extra to showcase over the top gestures especially when they don’t come from my heart. I think I’m gentle. I wanna learn how to be empathetic and first to give and serve. But if I’m honest, I’m not the guy of her dreams.

Mary reminds me of that but she also reminds me of how inspiring it is to know you are unrefined and at peace with the stretch marks on my thighs — my imperfections.

I was rooting for Tom, man! He stood up consistently for what he believes yet he also allows himself to be refined by love; even love that is dead.

I’m honestly not sure where I am going with this. I really just feel like I don’t Der serve love. I feel the train of love came multiple times and I chose sexy everytime. I chose vain. I chose ego. I chose to focus only on what I want.

Here is the sad part — chose is wrong. It’s choose. I still have a chance but I still keep choosing the same thing. I want it all. Life keeps giving me a choice — go for it all or choose love.

I sit back and ask what all is? All is better that last. All is wanting to do better. All is wanting to win the break up. All is not happy me. All is that verse:

36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Mark 8:36

All is covetousness. All is motivated by everything flesh. All is motivated by this world, the pride of life, lust of the eyes and flesh.

For everything in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — comes not from the Father but from the world.

1 John 2:6

It’s impossible to listen and lean into what God is saying when my heart is grasped tightly by lust and pride.

Lust says, you cannot be happy if her bum isn’t the biggest in the room. Lust goes into the future bedroom and envisions the legal pleasure. I even twist it and say, how God must delight in the pleasure I will have. The pleasure He created me to enjoy.

Have you ever wrapped God’s purpose in musts

• God must give me her, so any choices I have that doesn’t lead to her in my arms is clearly not God’s will.
• God’s desire is for me to be happy, and if she doesn’t make my ego swell, of I cannot brag about my catch then surely that cannot be God’s will.
• God must want me to not be a beggar but have so much to give. So anyone that doesn’t form a financial partnership that forever exorcises the demons of poverty from my lineage, surely that cannot be His will.

Love tells a different story. It reminds me of this dilemma God presents us, me even till date:

33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Matthew 6:33

There are relationships, marriages that have it all. They have it all usually because they don’t seek it all. They seek love, each other, compromise, service, commitment, faithfulness.

Those who seek things, get it and lose the fruit of the spirit. Joy, peace, gentleness, meekness.. let’s just see what a verse says:

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

Galatians 5:22–23

I have never seen the fruit (singular by the way) ooze out of a relationship that prioritized things.

I must seek the husbandman, the caretaker of the garden, the owner of the seed. I must seek LOVE; and come what may.

I often times come to this point, ruminate over it, but I don’t seem to embrace the unknown, I dont seem to know how to choose not to insure tomorrow myself but rest in what love is here.

It’s not even about happy. Or not about settling. It simply is refusing to invest my life into the lies that perfect has me enslaved to.

I know Dolapo, choosing love doesn’t make Anything settled because even love is not on the phone calling me to accept her; but reprioritizing my priority not just as a logical exercise but a shuffling that indeed translates into my personal culture, my way of life.

God, I wish I knew what honesty is. I am at war inside between honestly laying it bare. What I want and what feels right. But it’s all grey. Greed doesn’t look like a monster with two horns. Greed is alluring and her whisper gives me hope. Hope, a feeling I always assumed will be true and have its root in your love. In this moment, I know hope has a counterfeit. Maybe a twin like Israel’s Ishmael. Help me wait for Israel but help me also not expunge my feelings of being left out in this moment with a false seizing of matters and taking it into my palm. Help me rest in your timing. Ache, wait, sob, wait, and ache some more as life reminds me of my age, as little ones not long ago graduate college and threaten to find love before me. I feel like a relic freshly baked but very aware that to stay unchanged is to quickly amass tales. God, it feels wrong to ONLy want one thing of you and to bot be any close to getting it. I am struggling with worship because I know my satisfaction in you is shaken. I don’t deserve pity. But I want to make sure as hurtful as these feelings are that they find an outlet to you. I have been unable to speak to you. I just don’t desire your presence even though I know how much I need it. “Why are you doing this?” Comes to mind but father, I know you are not cruel and I will go bed with that. Thanks.