kdunnphotoIf there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering – 

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way — an honorable way — in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.” – Victor Frankl, from Man’s Search for Meaning. 

If you have never experienced suffering, it is unlikely that you will ever experience true love.
In the idealism of our youth, we take ‘love’ for granted. We imagine that we will spot our lover across a crowded room, our eyes will meet and our destiny is forever settled, locked in and secure.
Yet, for those of us who have crossed into the wisdom of middle age and beyond, we realize and have experienced that ‘Love’ built on the foundation of idealism and youth rarely endures.
As a survivor of 2 divorces, I can attest to the false idealism of youth, and the false idealism of “happily ever after”  – however strongly those beliefs lay hold of our imagination.
True love demands suffering, and true love endures suffering. The suffering of dying to old ways of thinking about love and embracing the idea that true love may not look like anything we have imagined…
… It’s far better than our imagination. 
True love requires that we come to know the author and the creator of true love. It is from this vantage point that we learn to recognize the depth and the width of the Divine love that is available to all who believe – it is from this vantage point that we can ultimately receive His very best and toss away the cheap, imitation love imposters.
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all of the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God – Ephesians 3:17-19. 
Beloved, do not settle for crumbs.