my theory on love.

people often say: "You're too young to know what love is." and yeah, they're sort of right.

but here is the thing:
they're sort of not right at all.

when you're seven and you love someone or something, truly love it, that is the deepest love you know. you really, really do love your collector's barbie you got for Christmas. that is the deepest love you ever felt.


and then you're thirteen and in junior high. some boy glances sideways at you and stuns you with his bright eyes and you just know: this is love. that feeling you felt when you were in elementary school? that wasn't love! that is nothing compared to what you feel now!
and you cry yourself to sleep and you talk nonstop about you're bright-eyed boy because you are in love with him.

...and then you enter high school. and you fall in love yet again. you hold hands and you get your first kiss and you're just in love. you laugh at your junior high self because you know now: that wasn't love, that wasn't even close to what you feel now.


this cycle will repeat again and again. throughout you're life, you'll constantly look back and say "i knew absolutely nothing about love when i thought i knew everything."


let me tell you something: you loved when you were seven, you loved when you were thirteen, and you will love when you turn 83.


imagine going to a first grader and giving them a calculus test. when they fail the test, will you say "you know absolutely nothing about math. you don't even know what math is!"?
but they do! they know left and right and addition and subtraction.
who are you to say that everything they know means nothing?

the truth is, we won't completely understand true, complete love until we die.
God is love, and will we ever truly understand Him in this life?
no, we can't even begin to comprehend Him.

but that does not make everything we learn void.

we love as a child, we love as a teen, and we love as an adult. we love with the deepest parts of our heart we can find, and as we grow we dig even deeper and find even more love.

so yes, that thirteen year old girl really does know nothing about the love that you now understand, but that does not mean that she does not love.

she reaches down in her heart as far as she can and gives all that she finds.

and she loves.
truly, she loves.