My understanding of love is far too narrow. My dad told me that. Except, he didn’t actually say those words. He’s classier than that. He listened to me complain, and then he showed me a better way. I’ll tell you what he said in a minute. First I need to tell you a short story.
When my grandma on my mother’s side died, her children drifted apart. Some families are held together by a single person. The family breaks apart when the person dies. My mom’s mom was one of those people. Time passed and my mom’s family became more of a memory than a reality.
Then, last year, my uncle found my mom again. He shattered decades of silence with a phone call. And just like that my family got bigger. My uncle (I’ll call him Colossus* on this site) brought with him a fianceé and her four year old daughter. I met him for the first time that I can remember at my wedding. I met him again over Christmas. Then, about a month ago, I got a call asking me to be his best man at his wedding. My brothers and I were asked to be groomsmen, and our significant others were asked to be bridesmaids.
As Beautiful and I drove to Idaho before the wedding, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being taken advantage of. I had a rented suit in the back seat, and I was driving over three hundred miles to participate in a wedding that would have no guests other than immediate family. But, most importantly, I didn’t really know the bride and groom.
When we got to Idaho, my dad was sitting in his office ruminating on the state of the universe while smoking a pipe and drawing. There are times when the world becomes very clear in that office. Hoping for one of those times, I sat down and shared my concerns with him. It was then that my dad looked at me and told me my definition of love was too narrow. He said the following with love in his voice, for them and for his son:
“They’re two lonely, hurting people looking for a family. And that’s why we’re doing this.”
My dad is a significantly wiser man than me. We saw two very different things when presented with the same situation. I saw myself being taken advantage of, and he saw an opportunity to show Christ’s love. Where my immediate response was to withdraw, his was to step forward. He opened his arms, his home, and his heart, and he treated them like the family they are. My dad has his faults, but his heart is the size of west Texas. And I hear west Texas is a pretty big place.
So the next day, I gathered my tux clad brothers, and we went to a wedding. The service was a small, beautiful affair. In the end, I lifted my glass of sparkling cider and welcomed Colossus and his wife into our family.
Like I said earlier, my understanding of love is far too narrow. But it’s getting better. If I can keep listening to people like my dad, if I can keep learning that I don’t have all the answers, maybe one day it’ll be as full as Christ wants it to be.
*Quite simply, the man in huge.
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