How to Find Directions to Real Love

Dear One, I am sorry I didn’t know. 

I had the direction of love all wrong

I didn’t know that first Valentine’s day when you gave me chocolate covered cherries, or 4 years later when you pulled out that red velvet ring box, asked me if I would, and slipped that diamond ring on my finger, or even after I walked down the aisle on cloud nine and in a poof of white — I didn’t know then, that our love wouldn’t actually find its realest, truest version in any of the mountain top peak moments.

I had the direction of love all wrong.

 I mean, it’s everywhere, the songs and the reels and Kool aid that Love is all the pinnacle, posed moments, the glam and roses and  framed moments, the high moments when we are about walking on air.

But you showed me: 

The love you’re looking for is found in the last place you’d look: in the valleys, and in the pits, and when everything else gives way — and one person reaches out and gives you their hand.

Love is when you got down on the floor and gathered me up close when the bottom fell out of everything, and I was sobbing like a baby, and your chest was my only soft place to land and you didn’t just hold me, you held me together. 

When we had to get dressed for the funeral and I didn’t quite know how I was going to keep standing, you stayed close enough to bear the whole weight of my busted ache, and when I’m inferno of pain, you’re the person who doesn’t glance around for the exit sign, but runs right into my heart burning down, and you sit with me in my fire, so I never sit alone in the flames.  

The paced hospital halls through bleary-eyed nights, and the cold bathroom floors when nothing seemed right, and the barf buckets and crying kids and puked-on sheets when we finally fumbled for the light — and you, always you there at rock bottom, not when life was shiny framed and sparkly filtered, but when life was downright ugly and hard, and my heart got ugly and hard, and nothing was particularly lovely but your love. 

You showed me the way to realest love.

Real love isn’t made on the heights but made in the depths, real love isn’t a peak experience,  but experienced in the pits, and real love is found strong right at rock bottom. 

I didn’t know: 

The love you’re looking for is found in the last place you’d look: in the valleys, and in the pits, and when everything else gives way — and one person reaches out and gives you their hand.  

Love Himself saves you not because you earned it at the mountain top, but because He holds you at Rock bottom.  

The direction of love is always going lower, where it’s not flashy but faithful, and the way to real love is not upward but downward, where only the real cruciform heroes go. 

The bliss of real love is what alone holds you through the abyss.

Love is forged in flame, and loved is carved through canyons and love is made at the bottom of mines — when there’s a whisper in the dark that says: “I’m still here and you’re still mine.”

The bliss of real love is what alone holds you through the abyss. 

So you and I? We will take the downward direction and way of real love, the way that can say:

When it’s hardest, I’m right here. 

When you’re at your lowest, my love goes lower, 

And when you feel lost and alone, I’m coming looking for you, to find you and love you all the way up to the skies.

*********

Don’t want to miss more of our love story? The Farmer and I are sharing, in Episode 2 of our 6 part video series, “The Way Through with the Voskamp Family” — dropping tomorrow! and every Friday for the next 5 weeks! — more of our story, the good, the hard, and 5 Secrets to Falling in Love Again!

Get Episode 2 in your inbox Friday — perfect watch for Valentine’s weekend! — with a preorder of WayMaker, Finding the Way to the Life You Always Dreamed Of — and we will get not only the whole 6 part video series into your hands, but more than $75 worth of free gifts!

$75 of Free Gifts When You Pre-Order WayMaker

And? Your Episode 1 is Already waiting for you — and Valentine’s Episode 2 dropping this Friday !—with your preorder of WayMaker right here