Love, refined in the fire

     You know who you are.  A mother or father in the shadows hidden away from the work a day world raising children.  Perhaps you dabble in the work world, or work from home. However, the bulk of your work consists of feeding those little cherub faces, taming mounds of laundry, or showing a patient(or not so patient) face as you reheat your coffee for the 3rd and 4th time.  What value is there in swishing from mundane task to mundane task.  Refereeing through the umpteenth disagreement in so many minutes.  All to collapse on the couch in the evening and do it again the next day.
     You know who you are.  A husband or wife head spinning as you move from one activity to the next.  Passing each other with only swift acknowledgement because you're tired from the day or have more to do's to cross off your list.  Some of you may feel like a single parent in a marriage or lonely even though your spouse is in the same room.  Carrying such a weight you, the last thing you feel is love.
     Sounds like a swinging time doesn't it.  We crazy people who choose to raise these little darlings, and commit to a covenant of love in marriage aren't masochists I assure you.  There are very few vocations in life that put a person on the fast tract to holiness.  Being a spouse and a parent happens to be one of them.  We are cooperating in God's life giving love.  We are constantly refined and purified in the fire of life's daily happenings.  Love is not some lofty idea or feeling.  God loved us first.  He loved us so much He gave His only Son to suffer and die on the cross for us and our sins.  We are called to respond to that love in kind.  Love, is a sacrifice.  Yes, a sacrifice my friends.  A joyful sacrifice because you're giving of yourself for the benefit and raising up of someone else.  You are willing good for that other person.  When that someone(s) mirrors our sacrificial love, true joys springs from it because it grows exponentially.  It goes against all human nature, believe me.  Someone close to me said the primary lesson they learned in childhood from their parents was 'get your own first'.  How often do we see and hear that ideology today.  Far too often.  That kind of selfishness is always mirrored back to us.  Mirrored back in betrayal, mistrust, anger, resentment, hopelessness, and despair. 
     How often do we get caught up in comparing and counting our sacrifices only to be left feeling bitter because we feel we're clearly giving more than someone else.  It is so easy, so, so, easy.  If we could always keep on our mind that God is the essence of love.  He is love.  Not a feeling of love, not loving actions, but Love itself.  A love that overcomes us.  Thank goodness too, because it's not easy to put our own desires, passions, and wants aside for someone else.  In fact, without God I don't think we could do it.  All the sufferings and sacrifices we're called to make throughout our day helps to burn that sacrificial love in our minds, our hearts, our very souls.  We are meant to be a gift to each other.  If we each become a gift giver, a bearer of love, we also reap love in return.  Our will's must bend and become God's will.  So into the fire we go my dear friends, into the fire we go.