Complimentary Love
Complimentary
Love
This
past Friday, as co-room parent for 4th grade, I had the partial
responsibility of throwing the class Valentine’s party. My co-parent is a very good
friend who took charge of cupcakes because she has an incredible genius for all
things food. I love to eat, but I cook for survival. Its a cook to live, not
live to cook limitation. She has expressed an equally limited interest in
generating class emails or party activity ideas. I embrace emails and party
ideas as my own beloved children and grandchildren. The party was a boisterous,
glorious, busy, chaotic, noisy, joyous, sweet-filled, fun result of our
complimentary loves.
The
following day, Valentine’s Saturday, found me clanking around cleaning two
loads of dishes, cycling through three loads of laundry, and raking up four
bags of leaves and yard debris (making up chore time from the previous days of
party prep). Steve was finalizing our taxes for the last year, and helping
referee skirmishes between the kids. To my mind, he had the harder of the home
care jobs. Details of numbers, money, and discipline, which I recognize as extremely
important, but gladly and rapidly, relinquish control over. Steve actually
likes tinkering and cleaning around the home too, but his skill and care for
tax code and math detail far surpasses mine. So, our children were well cared
for, our household maintained, and IRS audits kept two-more-filed-documents-distance
further away through our complimenting loves.
But,
finding the ways and methods of complimenting each other’s loves, given our
many differences, takes time and learning through a grand mix of failures and
successes. It takes finesse, forgiveness, and grace, even when we recognize the
differences and the benefits of having them. As you can see from the post-it verse above Christopher “gifted
me with,” patience and temper over such differences are my constant challenge
at home.
With
respect and deference to the perfection of how 1 Corinthians 13:4-6 was
actually written, I sometimes like to think of it this way too:
“Love is patient [with differences], love is
kind [to differences]. It does not envy [differences], it does not boast [about
differences], it is not proud [about differences]. It does not dishonor others
[differences], it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered [by
differences], it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but
rejoices with the truth [of differences].”
Attempting
to love even partially like God does perfectly - like this verse - is a constant
puzzle. I learn and relearn daily how to put together pieces of differences and
seeking complimenting parts where they can be found. When one kid likes pasta
and spaghetti sauce for lunch, and the other only likes peanut butter and jelly
(so twice the prep work for lunch is created), I learn how to be God-like loving
and patient and with the extra time it takes to honor their different tastes. When
I have three items to buy and the lady with the cart full of groceries in front
of me lets me go ahead, her God-like love is kind to the differences in our
purchases and is not self-seeking in getting ahead first. When I read a
fabulous book, it sometimes takes a willful dose of God-like love not to envy
their ability, but to appreciate that their gift compliments my enjoyment of
reading too, and provides a source of literary inspiration. When I am excited
about something I’ve done, it takes God-like loving consideration about
boasting and pride to decide whether a moment should end up on Facebook, or not.
Sometimes it is just the right thing to inspire a friend, sometimes not. As we
all do, I get it wrong and get it right, both in bountiful mix. It takes love
not to keep a record of the wrongs, but to recognize how they compliment the
rights. Then to endure in hope, love, and thanksgiving for the times that we
compliment and get it right.
Thank
you Lord, for your ultimate perfect LOVE that miraculously, eventually, fits
all our differences into compliments, even when we have puzzle pieces of
differences still spinning and know that we are too small to figure out your
whole, beautiful, universe-size design. Amen.
