By Femi Fani-Kayode
Love is beautiful but it can also ravage and destroy. It brings pleasure and it brings pain. It brings joy and it brings sorrow. It brings light and it brings darkness. It brings laughter and it brings tears. It brings peace and it brings turmoil. It brings tranquility and it brings turbulence. It brings serenity and it brings rage. It brings harmony and it brings fury. It brings construction and it brings destruction. It brings heaven and it brings hell. It brings loyalty and it brings betrayal.
It brings passivity and it brings aggression. It brings selflessness, kindness and generosity and it brings cruelty, sadism and masochism. It brings restraint and balance and it brings wild passions and extreme emotions. It brings attraction, adoration and adulation and it brings repugnance, rejection and hate. It brings the desire to cherish and to protect and it brings the urge to expose and to destroy. It brings the promise of a new dawn and it brings the testimony of a tragic sunset. It is indeed the greatest paradox that has existed since the beginning of time.
God IS love yet He created satan, the harbinger and apostle of hate, death and destruction. The songwriter wrote ”love hurts, love scars, love wounds”. Another wrote ”sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead”. How true this is.
How poignant and appropriate are these simple words from these two beautiful and celebrated songs. Yet at the same time that same love that can be so painful brings the sheer pleasure and blessing of lasting and cherished memories.
And the true test of love comes not when things are smooth and rosy but when challenges come and things go wrong. They say that when someone you love insists on leaving, however painful it may be, you must let that person go.
If that person is truly yours he or she shall eventually return but if they are not yours they will never come back. Whichever way, you win because you cannot lose what was never yours and what is yours will always come back to you.
Courage, patience, faith, strength, a gentle disposition, a firm resolve and a large application of the Balm of Gilead to wipe away the pain and heal your wounds is the key to survival and to weathering the storm of separation from a loved one. I know because I have been there. Apart from that, good old fashioned time has a way of healing broken hearts and wounded souls and of revealing the truth of every matter.
In the Book of Proverbs 30: 18-19, King Solomon said, “there are three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and THE WAY OF A MAN WITH A MAIDEN”.
How profound, deep and wise this great King was. ”The way of a man with a maiden” is indeed one of the great mysteries under the sun. This is not only a spiritual truism but also a tried and tested home truth. The morale of the tale is that no force on earth or below the earth, no situation, no set of circumstances, no degree of alienation and hateful words and no misunderstanding can keep two people that are truly in love apart forever.
That is indeed the power of love. It cannot be hidden or supressed for long and it cannot be resisted no matter how hard we try or how often we are persuaded. It is indeed a beautiful thing. Yet as a dear friend of mine recently told me, despite it’s awesome power, ”love is pain”.
There is however a deeper truth and that truth is as follows. When the Lord establishes the reasons and creates the circumstances for you to move on from anyone that you were once close to or that you love and when He makes a way for a new beginning for you, never complain and never look back.
Don’t be like Lot’s wife lest you turn into a pillar of salt. Don’t be like the children of Israel that were led by Moses into the desert only for them to begin to yearn and crave for the ”onions and garlic of Egypt” where they had once been slaves.
