Loves Desires?

'Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires'

I suppose this post will be more personal but hopefully still literate for the readers sake. The scripture above is in song of songs, twice. Its such a short book which emphasises on songs which focus on love and the male and female body however this is said twice, its probably the biggest repetition in the bible in context of the small amount of space the repetition occurs.

I think, personally, i have always struggled with love and always questioned what it is exactly and from this comes relationship questions, when is the right time? is she the one for me? is this merely physical attraction (again)? how do i know when god is calling me to a relationship.

'the joy of intimacy is the reward of commitment'

I have seen this above quote in two books, neither referencing each other, i can only assume that they are oblivious to the fact or that its a clear signal from god to me.
what is joy? joy is seen to be above happiness, near the feeling of love and Ecstasy, in fact we see that true moments of joy are not recognised till after the actual event, we do not and can not directly say 'I am experiencing joy' on the contrary joy to me is like 'good times' we have as memories in our minds. During the joy and the good times we are completely unaware of it however it takes a quick reminisce into the situation to be able to acknowledge that it was a good time and it was joy. Furthermore what is it to be intimate? I do not think it is specifically for relationships as we often talk of having intimate time with a friend or intimate time with god, however I can relate being intimate to the issue of love, when we truly love a person (be it as a friend or as something more) we have a desire to be intimate with them, conclusively being intimate is something more common than we think, being intimate could simply mean asking questions to someone to get to know them, however it could also mean enjoying a time of 'sexual' intimacy with a lover.

The quote makes complete sense to me now as it has been set on my heart and mind for meditation over the past month or so. When we make a commitment we seem to expect something, however I think many of us fail to realise that that something is so simple, the reward of our commitment is merely having n intimate understanding of whom you are committing to. we see this is friendships, in relationship, in work places, in sports teams and in fact pretty much everywhere there is human socialisation we are able to ever so slightly observe this.

Let us return to the scripture this post will be based on, this scripture tells us to not 'arouse or awaken love until it so desires'. I think its safe to assume that in this sense 'arouse' means to play with love, to tease it in the sense that we play with the idea of love and try to enter into the commitments of love without comprehending or even understanding the concepts of responsibility that is involved, we try to awaken love before we are ready for it. Of course our human ignorance tells us that we are ready for it, our human senses know nothing of the dangers involved for us as humans in the idea of love, we want to take all the love we can get and reap in the rewards without and consequences of course this follows the logic of trying to eat the icing of the cake without the cake, it tastes great at the time but shortly after we realise our indulgence was short lived and we begin to feel sick with ourselves. A latter problem with this scripture is 'until it so desires' it would be logical enough for us all to think, 'well how will we know when it desires?'
we cannot wait around in dismay for love to take ahold of us, a fools thoughts derive from letting things play as they may and that he has no control over these events. conjointly we have the power to make loves desire to enter our life a quick or a slow process. If we all waited for love to capture us I think its safe to say that we would all be sitting ducks. So what are the signs? being a victim and a straggler with the idea of love itself and with relationships I cannot say that my advise will get you anywhere however I can only try through a story of my own.

My first and last relationship came to me not too long ago however I think its important for me to include the advice given to me by a close friend that was consulting me in my struggle with love she said something along the lines of 'trust me, when you stop looking for someone they will find you' as I look into her current situation I cannot say this speaks true to her, however it had a significant effect on me, since the sprouting of my armpit hair I had always been trying to chase love, to catch it and be 'cool' like the other kids who had girlfriends, funnily enough it only led me into the solitary singleness that i am in now and that would've made me beg the lord for a new life at one point. Love was it as far as I'm concerned, our only point to life (biologically) is to reproduce, this starts with a relationship and as far as i was concerned back then if i didn't have that i didn't have anything.
I struggled with this advise at first but one day just gave up on searching, gave up on love itself, and surely soon enough a relationship came to me first and foremost in a friendship. conclusively this didn't last too long however its a lesson of patience for me, sometimes we think we are so useless because we try so hard at something and continue to let it fall apart. So often have I seen this in relationships and its hard to intervene as people cannot get past their human biology of sex. I do not know what the signs of love are however I think one thing to do is to confess, if you find yourself thinking about a person constantly, and you really do think they may be 'the one' for you, take it seriously and consult your close friends and family.

Often we try to tackle life all on our own and this consequently leads to us failing and thinking because of our failure that we are useless, this is not the case. I often say that no-one knows you better than you (other than god himself obviously) however I think its important to note that in times of dismay and trouble our very own perspective on ourselves is realigned to fit with the thing we currently want, consulting with others is helpful in these times as it reminds us that people do know you well, people are there to help you, some people may even be as close as family themselves, its these people that can define the unchanging qualities of our personality and when they see us in that light it helps to think with a clear mind and analyse a situation to our true desires.

so once again i restate these quotes

from scripture : 'do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires'
from literature : 'the joy of intimacy is the reward of commitment'

To sum this up I would advise us all to ask these questions about love.

1. Is this me chasing love or is this the love that has been waiting for me to look from where I was running?
2. Am I trying to awaken love before I'm ready?
3. Am I ready to committ myself fully to this love and if so does the person I love desire me also?

the advice I also gave to someone whilst in their struggle was that love is a two way street, if only one of you is ready to committ your life to the other then it needs to be reconsidered, if only one wants sex (for their pleasure) then it needs to be reconsidered.

The general message here is obvious to myself, and I pray that it will be obvious to you now as you read, Love is without a doubt one of the most written, recorded and thought about idea in our world today, that is alongside the controversy of the bible, which funnily enough coincides with the idea of love itself as we can see.

Live life without complaint, and Love till the point exhaustion.

(please note in this post i am talking about love in the sense of marriage and life commitments, i have addressed in a previous post the different aspects that love has)

Peace, Daniel