Learning to love; the way that I always knew how...

I love the poem by Roy Croft...my favorite actually, I have been able to recite it for over 25 years...

Love

I love you
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am
When I am with you.

I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what
You are making of me.

I love you
For the part of me
That you bring out;

I love you
For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can't help
Dimly seeing there,

And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find 

I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern
But a temple.

Out of the works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song.

I love you
Because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done
To make me good.
And more than any fate
Could have done
To make me happy.

You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.

You have done it
By being yourself.

Perhaps that is what
Being a friend means,

After all.

by Roy Croft 

I tenaciously held onto this description of love, one that I thought was "more ideal than real" for many, many years. I didn't believe my own heart to accept this as being REALLY true UNTIL I contacted my Love, G again. Over the years, I clung onto this poem, the truth that "real love" existed and even more, that I "had had" real love with G. I longed for it. I ached for it. Only when I saw that I had the right to reach out for it again, did I turn to my muse and recite the poem that I had hid in my heart many years ago. G was "my Love". He had loved me as the poem stated and I had loved him in this way; it was real to me now. Even without seeing him, after 25 years, I knew that I still loved him.  

They say that "art imitates life" and in this reality; art has expressed the most wonderful element of life; the life sustaining power of Love. I am a grateful recipient and participant in the most wonderful love story ever.