Games

I don't like games. In fact, I don't recall that I ever did like games, even as a child. That part could be wrong, but as I think back to my childhood, I'm not seeing great excitement over games. Give me a good book to read or movie to watch and I was a happy girl.

I still don't like games. Especially when they play out in relationships. This week I've had the annoying experience of interacting with two individuals who constantly play games in their relationships. In fact, they do it so much, I'm not sure you would call what they have with people a relationship. Its just games to see if said people can jump through enough hoops to satisfy their expectations. (Can you tell I'm still a bit hot over these encounters?) And what happens in the end? A completely sterile environment with no connections, no depth or intimacy of any kind where eventually, they are totally alone and they end up being the loser of their own game.

Seriously folks. Do we have time for this kind of nonsense? Are we promised so many tomorrows we can be gluttonous with them? Decide we won't speak to so-and-so until they shape up, just because we feel like it? "Punish" them for not living up to our unspoken expectations of them? Do we have that kind of time?

I think of my dear mom-in-law, in heaven these past five months almost, and how that sweet woman left a legacy of love. She loved well. And she lived a life of love. It wasn't grandiose, Broadway-Hollywood-name-in-lights kind of life; it was a quiet life where she richly loved those she came in contact with. I SO want that to be said of me. If I get anything right in life, I want it to be that I loved well; family first, and then others around me.

The Bible even carries the same pulse: "Live a life of love", "Walk worthy of the calling you have received; be completely humble, gentle, bearing with one another in love", "And in all things, put on love, which covers a multitude of sin".

Love, not games. LOVE, not self-exultation, self-promotion, self-protection.

LOVE.