Choosing Love

As some of you may have heard, The United States Supreme Court has ruled that gay marriage is now legal in all 50 states. The hashtag for this event is LoveWins. A beautiful sentiment, but in my experience love can neither win nor lose, it can only be accepted or resisted. Fortunately, though humans are geniuses at it, resisting love is always uncomfortable. Because Love really doesn’t care with whom it is shared or what form it takes. For all the forms it has taken, and for all the people who have shared it, Love passes no judgment, just says, “Great! Keep going, keep going, keep going.” There are times I wished it would give me sharper guidance. I have wished occasionally it would say, “Thou shalt not write epic poetry,” or, once upon a time, “Thou must marry a five-foot seven blonde, and her name shall be Karen, and she lives in Little Rock.” It would take some of the uncertainty out of things.

It is for this reason that I have compassion for those who felt the Supreme Court overstepped their authority. Uncertainty can be very unpleasant. I have lived the vertigo of believing there are no right answers to any choice I make. My life, after all, is nothing but choices, just as a book is nothing but a collection of 80,000 choices named words. What agony when every choice appears equal, when I ask my poor, unequipped intellect to decipher right and wrong.

Which is why I am so grateful that resisting love is always, always, always uncomfortable. My only job is to remember that discomfort is not actually normal. Not so easy, I confess, but no matter – the more I resist, the worse I feel. It’s as predictable as gravity. Except that when I reach my threshold of pain, and I surrender, and I fall, what catches me is all acceptance. I have done nothing wrong. I forgot and remembered – as innocent a mistake as believing Love cares what we call it.