Love Don't Live Here No More

Love is a battlefield...love is a secret garden. Love can tie you up in chains...or it can set your spirit free. Love raises you up...it can bring you to your knees. Love is fleeting...Love never fails. Love is an interesting concept. So many people search their whole life for it without even knowing what they are looking for. Love is a treasure, to be sure, but one man's treasure is another man's trash...so they say. Some don't recognize the gold they possess and gladly trade it for brass while others accept glass stones as if they are diamonds. Ah..if only love could be possessed. I know two different people...one searching for a reason to let go and another searching for a reason to stay. One wants my advice...although I am not sure why...while the other questions my credentials as "Dear Abby". A paradox as deep as the river of love itself. I may have tried...and failed...and tried...and failed...and tried ...and failed (wait where was I going with this?) but every attempt taught me more and more about love...and about myself. You see, I once thought love was something to be won...a prize that you can put on your shelf and polish every now and again while you smile at the memory of your crowning achievement. Something solid and stationary...it just was. How smart I was...how smug...how wrong! Then I thought that love was a total surrender of yourself...heart soul and body. You give and give until you have emptied yourself of everything that makes you worth loving. How noble...how selfless...how wrong! Okay...then maybe love is just a wild abandon. A childish search for happiness and bliss. The only thing that matters is how you feel about each other. How exciting...how fun...how wrong! Love is not a commodity...it is not a sacrificial lamb...it is not currency. In fact love is not a something at all. We are love. Created in the image of LOVE itself, each and every one of us just are. That is why when we love we are never depleted and when we allow ourselves to be loved we are never consumed. So my dear daughter...don't confuse love with lust. Don't confuse truth with emotions. Happiness...peace...serenity are to be found within ourselves...not without. It's all there...Don't let go! And to my friend...don't confuse loneliness with being alone (you are never alone). You are asking me questions that have already been answered in your heart. Listen to it...don't ever settle for less than you deserve! And now faith, hope and love, these three remain...and the greatest of these is LOVE.