Distance Hurdler

I am by nature, more of a selfish person than I’d like to be but, I do freely admit it. My selfishness has served me well in certain areas and not so well in others. I am also a firm believer in the fact that God places obstacles in our path again and again until we finally learn the lessons that we are meant to learn. That being said, I know for certain that God has placed you in my path or better yet, led me to you for a myriad of reasons but mostly, to rid me of my selfish ways. Or at the very least, mitigate them before they consume me.

Some lessons are simpler and easy to learn. The people who embody these types of more feasible lessons are the ones who come and go, in and out of our lives because they’ve served their purposes and we’ve learned our lessons then parted ways for the better. Then there are the lessons that take no less than a lifetime to teach. You are one of them.

I believe the lesson here is tri-fold – to love someone truly (without contingencies); wholly (including every flaw, major and minute); and selflessly (giving with every fiber of my being without consequence). I believe that until I master this type of selflessness, which of course cannot be done until I master a higher form of patience, I will never be rid of you. And I know this because, until I learn to act selflessly, I will never want to be rid of you. I will always want you – physically, emotionally, intellectually because I believe that you represent all of the things that I cannot grow to be on my own.

And there lies the ultimate lesson to be deciphered and absorbed in all of its complexity – To be rewarded by receiving nothing. To be become less selfish, I will need to give selflessly to another. The more of me I give away, the stronger I will become – bare-boned and free of distracting entanglements – stronger with less.

So if this is the lesson I am meant to learn then perhaps I have not quite learned it yet. Or perhaps, I am just not done loving you