Amid my desires to be self-sufficient and my busy work schedule, I've currently written 70 pages of this book. My question to you: What do you think? Leave your answer in the comments... vick ...
Nehemiah 8:8
So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.
The Introduction
LOVE MAKING SENSE: How It Began.
In the moment, I should have known I could not win this argument. There I sat, on the phone amid a baffling conversation about my love life with none other than the first woman I claimed I loved like no other, Lisa.
We, understanding Lisa was now married and not to me, were immersed in a dialogue about my current relationship, and how it seemed to be reaching a breaking point, as it had many times before. So she thought, and I knew.
To me, it all made perfect sense, though. I loved her, Melissa, and she loved me but needed some time to grow out of her childish ways. That’s when this story really began.
“She can’t love you, if she doesn’t understand love,” said Lisa, a hopeless romantic herself, in a fierce tone.
An accurate statement I couldn’t refute. If a person does not understand something, they couldn’t possibly do it or at least without fumbling through it mistake after mistake. Then Lisa said something slightly aloof.
“Damon, love doesn’t make sense,” she exclaimed.
I sat on my bed staring at a barren white wall, with a pause in my words, but a churn in my mind. What she just said didn’t make a lick of sense. How could love not make sense? I had heard the phrase 1000 times before. But how did anyone derive at this notion? I started thinking about a Bible verse I had recently skimmed over, 1 John 4:8.
It reads: He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.
Finally, I came back.
“Lisa, are you trying to say that God doesn’t make sense,” I questioned?
“What?”
“Think about it, God is Love,” I said with a smirk on my face knowing I’d soon trump her. “You’re saying love doesn’t make sense. Are you saying that God doesn’t make sense?”
She now sat silently.
Although Lisa never admitted that I crossed her up with that nugget of perplexing information, I knew that phrase “Love doesn’t make sense” would be carefully thought out before she next uttered it. At that moment, I knew I had stumbled upon something extraordinary, like an epiphany of sorts.
Over the next few days, a plethora of people besieged me, one way or another, with the notion, from their own thoughts and not my baiting, that love didn’t make sense. I rebutted with the “are you saying the Man upstairs doesn’t make sense” line. Each time, each opponent fell speechlessly by the wayside like a wounded duck.
I started thinking about how everything connected to God’s creation; The trees; The birds; The stripes on the shirts in my closet; The solid color of my socks; The whiteness of a piece of paper; the game of football; writing a book; The darkness of my skin; the song If This World We’re Mine. Everything had its purpose, and it all began to make sense to me through God’s eyes.
I brought the idea to a few people I trusted and a few I didn’t know, and their affirmation solidified my belief: Love Makes Sense. Now, I just had to figure out how it did and prove it to be truth. I mean, it is pretty hard to make sense of an intangible good that defies logic. But it’s definitely not impossible. What ensues is the core of what I’ve come to understand as the timeless essence of love.
Over time, I have discovered that Love is simple and easy, we just make it deep and hard. I began realizing our purpose is purported through the parables and analogies abound in the lives we lead. Like the film Love Actually said, "Love is all around us."
Weeks after the argument with Lisa and lots of introspective thought, I arrived at the decision to write this book and title it Love Makes Sense while walking out of a diner one evening with two of my most beloved friends from high school late one evening.
While talking, I thought “Love Makes Sense” would be the perfect fit. I explained how the initials aligned with the initials of my greatest example of tangible love I ever saw regularly, my grandfather, Lee Matt Smith. I thought that would be cool, a fitting tribute.
But then one of them blurted out, “You should title it Love Making Sense,” an obvious play on words. I liked it.
I did some research of specific tenses (stuff you forget after the sixth grade), thinking that if “Love Making Sense” read in the perfect tense, that would be the title. Wrong. It happened to be just the opposite, the imperfect. But I rationalized with myself. This book is to be about imperfection finding perfection. So the imperfect is becoming, plus, Love Making Sense sounds better that Love Made Sense.
I digress.
I'm no pastor or biblical scholar, just a man who stumbles upon his truth maybe a little earlier in life than expected. With the gifts bestowed upon me to think and write in a logical sense, this is my gift back to the world, a means of conceptualizing love in a multitude of forms, while understanding there is just one way.
This may seem like a befuddling way to perceive love. But at the same time, it puts life’s purpose in a unique perspective. Love Making Sense will deal with every type of relationship or love situation you can possibly imagine – loving oneself, male-female love, father to son, mother to daughter, the love of things. Also, this book will attempt to dispel the myths about what so many people consider love to be, but couldn’t possibly encompass.
But before we delve into the relationship aspect, we must first understand what and why love is.
Now, I’m sorry if you picked this title up thinking it would specifically speak to the idea of romantic love making sense. It actually will speak to it if you read into this right, and directly in later chapters and examples. Sorry, and I hope you still learn something.
There are potentially life-altering concepts to be unleashed, and hopefully you’ll find your definition of love somewhere throughout this reading process. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll finally be able to close the door on this argument with my so-called first love, Lisa.
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