Loving Together Separately

“nothing above us, nothing below us, nor anything in the whole world will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”   Romans 8:39

The past week has been a focus on love.  The week began with the Hallmark holiday of Valentine's Day.  I witnessed little pre-school children with their Valentines boxes.  That is my first memory of the day – the creation of the special box to sit on your desk in school.  Classmates would put cards in the box and hope someone would add a piece of candy and write something other than their name.  It has never been a holiday I celebrated in my head or heart.  This year I tore up carpet in my bathroom for my remodeling project – a total avoidance of the day.  Sometimes in our grief, the healthiest way is to avoid and not go down the path of heartache and pain in some situations.

This past week would have been my parents’ seventy-fifth wedding anniversary, and they celebrated it in Heaven.  My own hope of celebration was dissolved months ago.  This past week my oldest brother got married.  Both he and his bride had lost a spouse, and now they found each other and have loved again.  To see my brother happy and enjoying life again brought me peace and joy.  Even in sorrow, love endures.

I also officiated at a wedding this past week for a beautiful young lady who had been in my youth group.  It was an amazing wedding filled with love.  The couple was surrounded by the love of their parents, family, and friends.  They wrote their own vows and in the bride’s vows she said, “I vow to be the person you can lean on when life is hard.”  This couple understands that life will have difficulties, but they promise to be support to one another – to stand together as they face the world.

In our grief, we recognize the gift of love – the unconditional, self-sacrificing, willing to be there for you love.  Some of us experienced it, and others long for someone to care that deeply.  The hurt is that we had our person to lean on when life was hard and now that life is hard and painful and filled with uncertainty, we cannot lean into life with our person.  We will always love them.  Love never ends, but the physical separation overwhelms us at times.

When a couple promises to love forever, there comes a time when physical distance seems to break this bond of love.  But when this separation occurs, we each love separately, but we still love.  When we lose a spouse, a child, parent, friend, extended family member, the love we have endures forever, but a separation has occurred.  We have the desire to feel and touch and experience the love again. 

God promises that nothing separates us from His love – not even death.  God’s love extends across all boundaries and has no limitations.  In Heaven, our loved ones are surrounded by God’s eternal love.  They are loved and nothing separates them from the all-consuming love and power of God.  We have the love of God in our hearts, and trust God is with us in all of life.  Our loved ones and we, ourselves, are loved by the same God with the same love.  The love is the same, we just love together separately.