My Simple Faith

My simple faith.

Do love.  Don’t hate.

My simple faith was born from caring for Marty.  It was born from my doubt, it was born from my anger, it was born from my fatigue.

Love bound us early in our lives and at the end of our path together. Through Marty I learned how to really love.  When the strokes took her ability to think and care for herself, love didn’t wane, it was steady and real. 

Marty and I had a good marriage, but it was still two people living life and dealing with all of the pieces and parts of life.  Sometimes marriage wasn’t much fun, it was hard.  Two strokes and a broken Marty reminded me of my love for her, I learned a lot about loving during the hard parts.

After the strokes God and I had a real off and on relationship.  I was pretty ticked about the whole stroke thing and the care giving gig stretched on year after year and I got a ringside seat as I watched my cared for, my wife, diminish more and more as time went on. 

As I prayed and talked to God and as God talked to me I began to understand this wasn’t a God thing, it was a human thing.  God didn’t bless me or Marty with a divine plan, God didn’t strike her down with the strokes.  Delicate, miraculous creations of God broke.  As amazing as humans are we break, it happens.

Somehow, through all the stuff, all the angst, anger, and disappointment, I didn’t lose faith, I lost complexity. God told me to focus on two main things, do love, don't hate.  Sometimes even that is too taxing for this human.

Loving can be really hard sometimes.  There are people I find impossible to love.  We are charged with loving them all through those hard times.  That, in my simple mind and simple faith, is do love, don’t hate. 

I once asked several of my friends if there was anyone in their life, anyone they personally knew, they hated.  Not just absence of love but hatred.  Almost to a person they said no.  There were a couple of really well thought out hatreds, people who wronged them or loved ones.

We want to love, we are commanded to love, therefore we must not hate.  That’s hard.  That’s my sin.

Okay, I’m getting too preachy, that’s not my gig, you have good people to do that.  I’m saying being a caregiver, being a husband of a broken wife changed me in very fundamental ways.  My view of the world, my understanding of people, my faith were all put under immense stress and God shook me by the collar and said make it simple.

Do love.  Don’t hate.