It’s a different, as yet un-named type of Love

It’s not Valentine’s Day, not even close…that was three months ago, but I want to take a minute to talk about love.

You’re saying, “Yeah, Haro, you’ve talked about love a bunch of times… more of the same… blah blah blah, I think I’ll skip this one…” 

                                          STOP!!

Don’t do that, I have something you need to hear.

I have said before that there are three types of love, and I know that I have expounded on them, but give me a minute…

               they are Eros, Filial and Agape. Eros is the sensual type of love that exists between husband and wife, Filial is the love we feel for our family or close friends, and Agape is Divine love or the love of God. This is the love we must have for our fellow man, the kind of love that makes us more like God. I feel that having all three types of love in your life are important and can make you complete, but the most important of all these is the Agape, Divine, love with which we love each other. 

                                The scripture tells us that God IS love.

The love that is on my mind now may come under each of those categories, let me explain…

Without going into too many details, which could embarrass people close to me, I am the divorced mother of two, a daughter and a son. They are adults now with families of their own and I am extremely proud of them both, but when the divorce happened my son was four years old, and my daughter was fourteen. 

Their dad was an important man in the engineering field in our city, he had a brilliant mind and was highly respected…but the ravages of a disease that I can’t even explain has taken his ability to communicate and function in any normal capacity and is residing in an assisted living home so that he can have the medical help that he needs on a 24-hour basis.

I told you that to explain the situation. 

There have been a couple of times lately when his wife has been out of the country and the private nurse has had personal business to handle and there was no one to be with him as he cannot be left alone, so I went to be with him and help however I could.

When the nurses that came in to check asked about my relation to him and I told them they were surprised that I, as the ex-wife, would be willing to come and do the things for him that had to be done. I told them, “That’s what Christians do, God is love.”

As I look at him and communicate with him the best way that I can, I don’t see the hurt or pain of being left…I see a man in pain that needs someone who cares to be there, and that someone this past week was me. 

My heart felt love, again I don’t know how to explain that… when it was time for me to leave as he had been fed, taken to the bathroom and readied for bed, I was straightening the covers and pulling them up over him, I said, “Who would have ever thought we would be spending this kind of time together again?”  

I honestly wasn’t expecting an answer, not sure whether he understood me, or not…so I was surprised when he began to try to speak, I looked up at him, and he said, “I love you”

My insides collapsed; I was crushed.  I leaned down with my face close to his and said, “I love you too.”

How I got home traveling down our 285 expressway is a mystery, I was crying out loud and tears were flowing so hard and fast…

Love is doing something for someone that may have hurt you, denied or abandoned you, without expectation of anything in return. My reward is heavenly, and I know I have done what God would expect of one of His children. 

Hearts and flowers? Soft music and dancing? Candlelight and romantic dinners? All that is for the lightweights of the world that want to have an emotional reaction with a physical reward at the end of the evening… Love is something else entirely, and I have experienced that now.

Thanks to Agent X who writes a wonderful blog focused on people with real needs, the homeless, and the orphaned, for giving me the courage to say this out loud. Check him out at “Fat Beggars School of Prophets” right here on WordPress.