LOVE, SELFISHLY.

Sadness.

It creeps into the corners of our eyes. It hides behind our smiles.

It’s an inescapable demon in this world rife with pain. Yet, it’s relatively easy to temporarily keep it at bay. So, we stay busy. We work. We go out. We travel. We incessantly check our phones for new texts, likes, and follows. We watch way too much TV. Anything to keep ourselves from confronting ourselves.

It’s been a melancholy past couple of weeks for me. A good friend lost her father after a long battle with cancer. Another friend’s daughter-in-law committed suicide. My dad tore his MCL. My grandma is in the hospital.

I’ve also made a major decision in my life that I am not ready to mention here, but will say that it has brought me a maelstrom of emotion. Sadness. Regret. Emptiness.

So how do I respond? Do I face my emotions head on? Sometimes. However, crying at work is both emotionally draining and frowned upon. Nobody wants tears in their drink. (Okay, some creeper out there probably does.) So, I suppress my emotions, try to have fun, and keep busy.

What will it take to make me happy again?

What do I...actually, what does everyone on this bitter planet want? What does every man, every woman, every child, crave more than anything else?

Love.

That’s all, really. We all just want to know that our life matters to somebody. That we are accepted. That we are loved.

Yet, knowing this, we try to fill the love void in our heart with lesser things. With cheap imitations of love. With busying ourselves. With money. With success. With mindless television. With substances and activities that help us forget the gnawing sadness within.

The truth is, love down here on this earth sucks. We love, selfishly. We love when we can get love in return, or at least a thank-you or a pat on the back. We love when it’s convenient. We love the lovable. We love when it takes minimal effort, minimal cost.

There’s only one man who has ever loved with no concern for himself, and we took him and nailed him to a cross. Now, we either don’t care all that much about him, say he doesn’t exist, or can’t believe that his love is truly enough to fill the void.

S0, we keep searching for something better than a Savior.

A band I loved growing up put it this way:

“So many lives searching to find out what love is, but searching is all that they’ll find. This is the love, that Jesus would give up his life and carry a cross that was mine.”

I believe this to be true. Yet somehow, the love of a being I can’t see or touch, I can’t embrace, fails to fill me with light in my darkest times. I’d rather settle for the selfish love of broken people to somehow try to make me whole.

What will it take for his love to be enough for me?