Decades ago, someone in my family reported these words spoken by my mother: You know Barbara. She’s in love with love. Then and now, I believe that she was commenting on my tendency to attach myself to a succession of “unsuitable” romantic partners in the hope of finding the one true “love of my life.” A romantic idealist indeed. As things transpired, I married in haste the candidate I finally fell for–his suitability, I must admit, still questioned by my parents. But never mind. Read on.

From the beginning of dating age, I wasn’t very good at feminine wiles. I wanted too much conversation and too little making out. Thus my preferred relationships with the opposite sex were carried on by correspondence. My high school boyfriend and my later college boyfriend were located hundreds, even thousands of miles away. The former wrote from the States while I was living in New Zealand as an exchange student. The latter, a soldier in Vietnam whose name I plucked off a college bulletin board, sustained my romantic interest for about three years. We never met in person. Turns out he was married. Or was he? I’ll never know. I do know that our conversation by mail was deeply sustaining for both of us in our respective struggles with life as it was.

Meanwhile, one of those in-person swains—probably a blind date if my usual pattern pertained—accused me of being a girl who only wanted to “mind-f*ck.” Nice. Being prissy (that is, acutely self-respecting) and perhaps a little too overtly brainy, didn’t seem to be a “winning” attitude in the dating game. Who needs it? Think I’ll just stay home and study for my French test.

Nevertheless, not very long into my independent life, I met a man who really did love me. He loved me with the kind of insane worship reserved for a goddess. Yep. That was IT for me! Friends who knew us throughout the thirty-eight years of our marriage until he died will tell you how extravagantly he proclaimed my image of perfection. He upheld me as a treasure, a trophy wife, the ultimate lover, the more-than-equal partner, while I had the privilege of both claiming and modestly shrugging off the impossible image he promoted. Trust me. This feels pretty good.

In short, I got what I wanted. We both did. Of course, our profound life-shaping relationship came with a price. Every relationship does. But that’s another story. With that choice of a partner, I never deviated from my early impulse to remain perpetually in love with love.

Of course, it isn’t just romantic love I love, and never was. All along, mine has been a hunger and thirst for the connecting spirit of the entire universe. As husband material, try “competing” with God! My lifelong explorations in love have involved a lot of books, discussions, worship experiences, contemplation, and poems. And of course, letters. I totally know that love goes far beyond the boundaries of human experience, but we are created by it, in it, for it. I want all of it.

Now joyfully married again, I’m still in love with love, and I’m grateful for God’s infusion of true love into each and every day.
 

CONVERSATION
 
After the last, late crying of the birds,
the murmur of a deep rain folds us in.
Our conversation leaves no room for words.
Your silent touch becomes a sound within.
 
Softly at first, a pulse of ancient drums
sending a message through my wilderness,
while to my hearth the storyteller comes,
the virgin dancer, and the sorceress
 
strumming their runes of ecstasy and grief
on every nerve like an electric song
till I become the very mouth of life,
wild with the ululation of God’s tongue.
 
 
Barbara Loots
 
Published in Landscapes With Women (1999)