I believe that we all have the divine spirit of God within us. He forged our very being with the most powerful tool in the universe, Love. We all long for Love and all it has to offer. At least, what we consider it to be. We have taken the most powerful essence in creation and have brought it low by pairing it with lust, envy, and greed. No, we have actually forgotten what Love truly means. We have come to the conclusion that for us to be “happy” we must find someone to “love” us and that we can “love.” However, we never end up being happy because we don’t know the true meaning…or maybe we do. Maybe we do know what it means and we really don’t want it. In my experience of Love, it is a hard journey. It is the most wonderful and important aspect in all of life, but it is hard. However, we don’t want hard, we want easy and comfortable! We want “secure” and we want it to be our way. We don’t want hard, so in fact we don’t want love. When I met my lovely bride to be I sat down on the first date and told her that if we hit it off after dating, I wanted to marry her. She replied with the same and we proceeded to see if we could meet this life head on as one. I knew from that first day that it would become our reality. Neither of us had really dated before and we didn’t have any intention of getting married before we met. We always knew that If God had someone for the the other, He would bring us together. When I met my wife I saw adventure, passion, spirituality, honesty, beauty, and Love. I was a little shocked, because at the time I didn’t believe a person like her existed. I knew that together we could devote our lives to discovering Love and all that it had to offer. I knew it would be hard, but I knew it would be worth it. See, Love is not “happily ever after,” but then again, it most certainly is. We as individuals have very different ideas of what that actually looks like. In my experience it means being caring for the other person more than you care about yourself. It means loving yourself enough to have and experience the best in life. It means telling your spouse you love her when she is sleeping and can’t return the sentiment. It means long hard days dealing with overcoming insecurities, weakness, and fear. It means connecting with other souls, truly and honestly. It means spending time in nature and caring for and respecting the earth and her bounty. It means keeping the temple in which you reside clean and strong. It means listening to a story when nobody else will. It means living the abundant life. Do not settle for less than what you deserve. Do not lie to yourself that you are lowly and undeserving. Do not believe the lie that people are evil and it’s you against the world. Do not envy the love of others because you haven’t discovered it yet. I find that so many people get married or enter into relationships for the wrong reasons. We want to force a relationship with another person when we are not on the same playing field or planet. I understand that we all want companionship; but we have to be patient and have the right intentions. We have to want better for ourselves and want to grow. We should strive to love one another the way God has created us to do and the way He loves us. We are all eternal beings created by Love itself…all we have to do is realize it and act. Meditations at midnight.

Your brother,

Spencer Liles