Thought for food.

I recently have been pondering the nature of love, and I came to a conclusion that I don't think readily comes to mind sometimes, especially when we're "having a bad day".

Loving someone is a full-time job; its not a perk or side-benefit. Its hard work too; you have to sacrifice something on your part to make it happen and to make it work. Often, I think when one is in that initial stage of a relationship, this kind of thing is farthest from mind, because its NOT hard at all!

That first "puppy-dog" stage. You both want to be together, you want to talk constantly, and learn about each other. Sacrificing time or whatever isn't too terribly hard, in fact its pretty darn easy. And its great, you're in the best spirits you can be.

But then father time spins the clock; suddenly its several months or a couple years later. And it is here that if both parties don't recognize what true sacrifice is, I doubt the relationship will be in good condition, if it lasts.

At this point in time, a couple will start to feel the pressures of life flowing again, which is fine and normal. There is, after all, another world that the two of you live on. Daily commitments will return to normal. Some things you want to do become important (we all have more than 1 dream). In short a situation arises where either the couple will mistake the cooling "puppy-dog" stage as a sign that they don't "love" each other anymore, or find that they are not up to this real kind of "sacrificing myself" sort of thing and call it quits.

Or they will see that their love (if truly grounded) has not departed them, and instead they will begin another level of love, a sacrificing love. Those moments when you are tired from a long day of work, and want nothing better to sit and relax, but instead make time to call and talk to the special someone. That time when you're so busy with everything else, but you drop something for a bit (even though it will cost you somewhere else) and take time to make something, or do something thoughtful. These kind of sacrifices, the supporting of each other, sacrificing yourself for the other, gives rise to the next level of love! Its a deeper type of love, and it doesn't mean that silly "puppy" love is gone forever, in fact both compliment each other and remain together.

Loving someone is an awfully big adventure.

Updates

August 2nd marked a highlight for me. After 8 weeks of an intensive advanced Motion Picture class, our film shorts showed that night. All the sleepless nights, and missing meals, and agonizing over details finally paid off.

We showed ours with 7 other films that night. They were all great, but I loved how well ours turned out. Seeing it in HD (the first time the RVC hosted in HD on a giant projector) and then having the audience of maybe 60-70 people around watching too, it was marvelous. There is one scene in the movie, as a character walks down a flight of stairs that I just get chills. It was really awesome to see our film that Jake Perry, Aaron Markey, Josh White and me all worked on and slaved over and turned into something great. Our professor said it was beautiful; some alumni told us afterwards that they thought we should enter it into a film festival! How awesome is that? We are going to enter it in, after cleaning some stuff up in the next few months.

I'm really grateful for these friends I've found through this class. Most of them are all very hardworking individuals, and we all love video games and geek out over computer hardware and camera stuff. Its a group of people I'm going to try and stay in touch with and work with in the future; I'm going to miss this program once I'm finished with RVC in the spring. I've had the best teachers to date, and the best classroom group experience to date with this bunch of people.

Another highlight of thursday was that a certain cute blonde-headed brown eyed girl came to see me. She skipped her important grad class just to drive 2 hours after she got off working a 6 or 8 hour day to come and surprise me at the screening and watch it with me. What a woman; an amazing precious woman. A real gem, and example of what other men should look for in a woman, because she is simply awesome. The sweetest, kindest, ornery, beautiful, caring, friendly girl who loves Jesus. I am blessed, and don't feel particularly worthy of her, but I'm thankful that she's in my life.