The First Ninety Days Ch. 08

Jon leaned close and said, "I'm glad you didn't drown and go holy up to God," and she smiled and whispered, "I'm glad I didn't either," and when she looked back at Harold's face it was clear and clean again.

Pastor Larson's voice cut through the low babble. "All right, if we could rejoin the circle again, I believe our five minutes are up... If everyone could rejoin the circle... Yes, yes. All right. Everyone present and accounted for? Which group would like to go first?"

Alice Larson looked at the people to her left and said, "Hmm, we might as well go first. Jenna, why don't you explain."

The girl Jenna threw her hands in the air. "How did I know that was coming." There was laughter, which Caitlyn didn't join in—why wasthat funny? Clearly, there were in-jokes going on that she wasn't aware of. "Well, we talked mostly about the fact that there's multiple things we love, and that the meaning of the word changes depending on what it is we're loving."

"Hey," said Jon loudly, "they plagiarized our idea!"

"No," Max Lapinski said, "they plagiarizedour idea!"

"What sinners we all are," said Sylvia Blumenthal, "whatever happened to 'Thou shalt not steal'?"

Jenna Richmond plowed on. "We say that we love all sorts of things—friends, lovers, pets, God, cheesecake—but we don't love them the same way. And wecan't, they're such different things. I mean, cheesecake isn't even alive. But yet we say we love them. So, we think that the word 'love' has a different definition depending on the context. Depending on who the beloved is."

"Or what," said Alice Larson.

"Or what," Jenna agreed.

Max Lapinski went next. "We ended up talking about kinda the dark side of love. There's times when we get, I dunno, sort of hung up on love as this thing we're supposed to have—you know, media expectations and peer pressure and all that. Even just look at fairy tales: true love and things like that. Or parents who are too caught up in loving their children to give them room to grow." Jon and Caitlyn exchanged glances at that one. "And that kind of segued into a conversation about what love is not. I mean, we all know the Scripture: Love is patient, love is kind, blah blah blah. But what is lovenot? And the thing we got down to, ultimately, is that love is about the other person. It's inclusive, not exclusive; it's accepting, not controlling; it's selfless, not selfish. Love is almost completely one-way: from the lover to the beloved. It doesn't expect anything. It just... Gives."

"A good thing, I think, for young newlyweds to hear," said George Larson with a smile.

Missy Sloane took the floor. "Ours kind of grows off that. We talked about love as related to self-sacrifice. I mean, we all know that love is (or is supposed to be) selfless and inclusive and accepting, but Jon and Caitlyn came up with an interesting observation: the deeper we love somebody, the more likely it is that putting their needs over our own will be objectionable to us. It increases the chances that we'll have to do something we don't want to. So, the people we're most likely to sacrifice for are the people closest to us. I think, normally, we expect those people to be the ones we're in relationships with, but that might be best friends, or God, or our parents. And—actually we didn't talk about this, I just thought of it just now—and maybe, sometimes, we hold back, because we feel like we shouldn't have to sacrifice for anyone but our romantic partners or whatever. I mean, the two topics are so intertwined in our modern culture: your lover is the person you have to sacrifice for, andnobody else. Maybe, if we aren't willing to put ourselves second when other people are involved—friends, parents, God—that limits our ability to love them. Maybe the depth of your love for someone isdefined by how much you're willing to sacrifice for them."

Caitlyn gazed at her, feeling an odd sense of pride that her random thoughts could have encouraged such an observation—because, unquestionably, Missy was right.Wecancontrol how deeply or strongly we love other people. It's totally up to us.

"Our group came up with something that each of your observations point at," said George Larson.

"You mean, yousuggested to your group," said Alice Larson with a grin.

"Well," said George Larson with a modest smile. "Ihave lived approximately twice as long as the average group member. Anyhow, you'll notice that nobody talked about feelings when they talked about love. Doesn't our culture normally describe 'love' as a feeling?—an intense attachment?—affection, love, sympathy, desire, care? And yet nobody addressed those.

"The reason they did is because those things are feelings. They grow and fade over time. Love is not a feeling: love is a choice."

The group was silent.

"We will always feel things," George Larson said, "and what we feel is not necessarily under our control. Sometimes we will feel affection. Sometimes we will feel contempt. Sometimes we will feel nothing. And, as with any emotion, we choose whether to express it. Well, the reverse is also true: we can choose to express emotions wedon't feel. Sometimes choosing to express them makes us feel them: happiness makes you smile, but it's also a proven scientific fact that smiling makes you happy. Just the physical act of smiling engages the endorphins and neurotransmitters that lead to uplifted mood. The brain is a marvelous creation: it both controls us and is controlled by us.

"Joy, happiness, affection, sympathy, desire: these are emotions. We cannot choose them, merely influence them by our actions. Loveis an action. Wecan choose it. And the question of whether wedo choose it goes a long way towards defining who we are—not just as Christians, but as people."

"Wait, so," said Max Lapinski. "If God is love, and love is a choice... Does that meanGod is a choice?"

His tone was so perfectly bewildered that he garnered an immediate laugh, but George Larson merely nodded. "Yes, Maxwell. Godis a choice. We can choose whether or not to be in touch with Him, and privy to His voice in our lives. And, once we have chosen to hear His voice, we can then choose whether or not to heed it. God is always present, but He gave us free will, and that means it is our choice whether or not Heparticipates. Haven't we all seen those people who, in social gatherings, tend to withdraw, preferring not to participate in the fellowship even when invited?"

Caitlyn felt the burn of eyes on her face. Then she realized that many of them were actually looking at the man sitting on her left: Harold Cheng. And yet she thought,If they'renotlooking at me, it's only out of politeness. I too am one of those people.

"Now, unlike those people, God will always come join the party if we invite Him to," George Larson said. "But first we have to invite Him in. And that, Max, is most certainly a choice."

Caitlyn was nodding. And so, she saw, was Jon.

"I think that was a really good meeting," he said as they drove home. "I had never thought of love being a choice before."

"Neither had I," Caitlyn said. "But let he who has eyes to see and ears to hear..."

"Yeah," said Jon. "I think that, no matter who we are or what we believe, there's a part of us that recognizes truth. Whether we like it or not, whether we want to believe it or not, we hear the truth and it stays with us."

Yet you don't recognize the truth of the Bible, she thought, but what she said was, "That doesn't explain my parents, though."

"No, it does," he said. "They clung to their lies so fiercelybecause they heard the truth. They heard it, and didn't like it. They saw the love between us and didn't want it to be so, so instead of facing it they turned away. Hearing the truth is not the same as being able to accept it and adopt it."

"Is that why you don't believe in the Bible?" she said.

Jon looked at her a long moment. Then he looked away for a long moment more.

"Yes," he said finally. "It simply doesn't make much sense to me. There's a difference between knowing something in your heart and knowing something in your head. The stories in the Bible make sense to my heart, but not to my head."

"But that's where faith comes in," Caitlyn said. "Being able to trust that, even though it doesn't make sense now, it someday will."

"Yeah, but, I don't just sit and wait for sense to be delivered," Jon said. "I try and figure it out. There's this old guy, lived about the 1500s. Said, 'I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense and intellect intended us to forgo their use.' He was a smart guy: figured out that the earth revolves 'round the sun. Galileo. You may have heard of him."

Caitlyn recognized thefaux-folksy tone in his voice, refused to rise to it. "Well, it's good that you're trying to figure it out. Too many people just dismiss it. What did you think of the meeting overall?"

Jon shrugged. "I liked it. It's fun to meet people our age—even if they are a little bit younger—and none of them are, like, flaming hypocrites or judgmental or anything. Heck, most of them are normal."

She glanced at him. "You saw it too?"

"And just our luck, he gets in our group," Jon said. "What do you think it was?"

"But... The thing is, he kinda belongs," said Caitlyn. "Remember what Pastor Larson was saying, about, you know... People who kind of prefer to stay off to one side?"

"Yeah," said Jon. "I used to be like that."

"So did I," said Caitlyn.

"You still are, kind of," Jon said, not unkindly. "I said like twice as much stuff to the large group as you did, and it'syour church."

"But it wasn't just shyness or whatever, he also seemed... I dunno, angry or something."

"You saw it too?"

"I don't know what it was. What did we say to annoy him?"

"Nothing, that I can think of. But it's not like we know him well enough to be able to figure it out."

"And it's not like he'll give us the chance to get to know him that well," Caitlyn said. "It's like... We failed some test of his, or something. Without realizing it."

"Well, at least we don't have to think of him until next week," said Jon. "And hey, maybe he won't come."

"Oh," said Caitlyn with a veiled smile, "are we going next week?"

Jon rolled his eyes and put his hand on top of hers, their fingers interlacing. She squeezed his hand.