What Is It Like?

        I couldn't believe it when I heard it. It was impossible, implausible, and absolutely ridiculous to think that one of my best friends, one of the most non-emotional people in the world, was actually in love. She called me a few days after I found out. We had barely spoken our hellos when I said, "Well?"
     "Well, what?"
     "Oh, come on. Tell me everything. When did this happen? How did this happen? The last time we talked you were just as determined to stay single as I am. Tell me everything!"
     Slowly and with great detail the story came out. I lay on my bed, listening, laughing, and nearly bursting with joy because I could hear that sound in her voice: the sound of a woman abandoned to love.
There's a question I have been asking ever since I first heard that sound:
     "What is it like?"
I am always asking people this question. A lot of people find it amusing, probably because they know and can not imagine not knowing. I have never felt this feeling, so I wonder about it, especially when I am around people like my lovestruck friend. When I asked her this question, she responded with, "I'm with my best friend. It's amazing."
         Another time I was in the car with a wonderful older woman named Shirley. She was telling me about her husband.
     "Even in my 60's I used to get dressed up for him and feel butterflies at the thought of seeing him. Every time he came into the room, I knew it without being told. I knew him better than I knew anyone else, and he knew me too," she said.
      I could not imagine feeling something like that. I feel butterflies before stage performances, but believe me it has nothing to do with a boy. Shirley's story awed me, much as Elisabeth Elliot's description of her relationship with Jim Elliot did. On the day Jim Elliot told her he loved her, Elisabeth said she floated about in a "rainbow haze." I remember reading that sentence, and then reading it again. "What is this rainbow haze?" I wondered. I went back and read the whole paragraph several times. I wanted so badly to understand this feeling of being swept away by love.
      The funny thing is, I have realized that I do understand what it is like, but in a different way than most people. There is no greater love than the love Jesus showed as he laid down his life for me. I find myself in a rainbow haze when I think of it, glorying in the sunshine of the freedom He has brought me, and crying at the realization that all the wrath I should have gone through He endured for my sake. Is not this love? Indeed, it is, and I abandon myself to it.
     

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