A Day to Ponder the Meaning of Love

     When a topic touches me, I can let it sink into my bones for days. So today is Valentine's Day; and Love is one of those topics.
     "What do you think is the point of relationships? Any relationship from our relationship with finances, to food, to career, to family, to significant other."
     In my belief, the point of any relationship is to bring us closer to God. When we've lost touch with that point, we wind up worshiping that relationship--we give our power to it and can even get into a power struggle with it when we are missing this point.

(Please feel free to substitute the term for God that you are comfortable with. I know that it was a trigger word for me at one point in my life.)

"So how does a relationship bring us closer to God, especially a love-relationship?"Let's look at love in action.

1. What does it mean to seek comfort from an intimate partner? In my belief it means feeling safe enough to touch our feelings completely with our partner/close friend/family member as witness when they are stirred. To seek growth and healing through love--becoming lighter as in enlightened as in closer to God. Most people think of being comforted as having someone take us away from our feelings, but enlightenment comes from using them as fuel for learning, healing and growth.
2. Most people think of a thoughtful person as someone who demonstrates small acts of kindness, like buying a card or gift. But the motivation behind thoughtful acts is key? If it is an attempt to prove caring or to win love, I'd call that more manipulative than thoughtful. And if someone demands that kind of love, their insecurities are coming to the surface to be revisited. And that's great as long as they are revisited in the safety of love rather than placed as a yoke around the intimate partner. 
3. Thoughtful to me is someone who does their best to be mindful of the motivation for their words and/or actions before they act--someone who lives and loves deliberately rather than ignorantly. Someone who knows that the motivations for our words and/or actions are either rooted in fear or in love. The thoughtful person will go the extra mile to do what love calls for, even at the risk of not being popular. They might buy a card because it brings them joy, but not for kudos. They know that popularity contests are ego driven and the truly thoughtful aren't interested in inflating egos, but rather in dismantling them since that is what brings us closer to God.