Christina

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WE ARE NOT REQUIRED TO SAVE THE WORLD. WE ARE REQUIRED TO STAND UP AS TRULY AS WE CAN FOR WHAT WE LOVE.

Amen.

We're responsible only for our own actions and reactions.

--A

[Linna Heartbooger]

I echo what Cambo said. Honored you felt you could share this story, lorin. I'm ....not really ready to process it as reality. *shakes head*

but what do we love? Are we just in love with the idea of being needed?

Someone who asks hard questions like these of herself could be on the edge of finding the answers she wants.

Can't go ahead to finding becoming something better unless we are honest with ourselves about what's really in us.

Written for lovers, but largely appropriate for parent-child relationships (except where it isn't...)

If I've managed to learn anything at
all from what we've done
It's that even though it fills the cracks and crevices
And mends the tattered soul
Still we're each the others nemesis and
Two halves do not always make a whole
And though you know I've often heard it said
We're made of sterner stuff
Love is not enough
Love is not enough

And all the things I left unsaid assuming that you knew
As if there were no question but that you could read my mind
And all the times I shut you out and
Left you hangin', me deaf, dumb and blind
And though I know we vowed to stick it out
Through the easy and the rough
Love is not enough
Love is not enough

All the stupid games we played to save our tarnished pride
As if it really mattered which of us was wrong or right
And even as we stood and watched it fall apart
I loved you with all my might
And though the heroes in the paperbacks
always wind up in the buff
Love is not enough
Love is not enough

Thanks, SD. Useful reminder that our power to love others is limited by the bondage of what we haven't worked through in our own selves...

I can think of little better motivation to go through the hard work of seeking to change than "It will affect someone else for good if you do." If only I could see the connection between the two all the time. (or maybe it's better this way for now.)

[rusmeister]

May God bless you, Lorin.
There are things that we do that I believe are salvific - that they do something in the direction of our salvation regardless of how else we are in our lives, and fulfilling the law of Christ is definitely one of them.

Not that those of us who understand the dangers really even want flattery - but loving others - agape, especially when it is hard, is what gives hope in this world. I think when we really sacrifice ourselves and what we want for others, that Christ is there.

My mom is a good example of that, too. She adopted a Mexican infant with spina bifida - abandoned at a Catholic orphanage by a drug addict mother, and it's hard - my bothers, sister and I all wish we had our wonderful mother be a wonderful grandmother for our own kids, but the boy (who's now 20) takes all her energy (living on the other side of the continent doesn't help either, but that's another story). Nevertheless, I think that what's she's doing is salvific.