Not Writing About Love

My Struggle with Protecting and Being Protected

“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

~ Mark 10:45 ~

I’m afraid to write about love. Writing is my safe space. The place I search for God and find me. The place I descend into, estranging myself from all that’s foreign and familiar, and allow curiosity to do more than kill cats.

Writing sorts the boxes in the attic of my heart that contain treasures and torments long forgotten yet protected all the same. I tear open the boxes with each clause, independent or otherwise, surprised at what I find and what finds me. Some boxes are delightfully mislabeled. “Dishes” are actually childhood toys. Some are not. “Joy” is actually sadness barbed in denial, smiling away the tears squeezed by wounds that won’t heal.

Write about theology? Well. Don’t mind if I do.

My children or my wife? Indeed. My favorite topics, in fact, even if I indulge more than they should have to tolerate.

Write about being molested by my babysitter at the age of six? Fine. Behind the screen such vulnerability doesn’t feel daunting anyway. Something more akin to therapeutic.

But love? Writing about love tremors me. All of me. It just doesn’t feel safe.

Sure, I preach about it. Read about it. Laugh and cry over it, eat dinner with it, and give presents in the name of it. But writing about it feels a bit too close. Too tangible. Too threatening.

Love does that. Incites terror when it manifests in flesh.

Now, the thought of love, safe and secure in the abstract, excites the young and the old. Even the most cowardly and calloused secretly gravitate toward stories on screen or in print that center on love. That recraft the age-old tale of noticing, flirting, courting, and marrying, not just ‘til death parts, but typically happily ever after.

And yet, the same onlookers are launched into fight or flight when love becomes flesh, freezing their mind and twisting their tongue when someone they desire walks by or, God forbid, speaks to them. I mean, goodness, even when love became flesh and dwelled among us, we eventually killed it. Because love is safe in the abstract, but threatens when it incarnates. When it walks among us. When it asks to be lived. Or even just written about.

I think I know what love is. I’ve listened to countless sermons on the topic, even from pastors who preach with a different tone on social media. I’ve heard and rehearsed countless tales that espouse it, even ones that accentuate it with lament and Shakespearean tragedy. I’ve read and recounted endless novels and biographies where love drives the plot and carves the characters with surgical precision. I would argue, in moments, that being happily married for over twenty-two years with four kids and a close family constitutes some familiarity with love. A knowledge of love. An intimacy with at least the thought.

And yet, I preserve a barrier—a buffer zone, really—between me and love’s incarnation. I don’t always know why, but I do it anyway. I create connection with an escape route in case love’s threat becomes a bit too much to behold.

It’s strange what our aversions to pain will do, imprisoning us in our own Rapunzel-like tower to protect us from the wildness of love that, actually, wants to liberate us. And yet, like most, I find that I crave what’s familiar far more than what’s healthy. And I’m not sure how familiar I truly am with love. How to give it, how to receive it, or how to simply behold it.

For instance: what do I want from love? When it asks, “how can I serve you,” what do I say? What ought I to say? I’ve been conditioned to rebuff any requests to serve me in the name of loving a King who didn’t come “to be served but to serve” (Mk. 10:45). Yet love approaches with a whole different way of living. Different requirements and expectations of what a relationship forged by love looks like. Smells like. Beholds.

“Shane,” love tenderly whispers, “how can I serve you?”

When I think of love, I think of protection. Not sex or listening or gifts or even holding hands at night walking through an enchanted city after a delightful meal and perfectly placed wine suggested by the sommelier. Sure, these things are wonderful and, for some, quintessential components of love. But I’d exchange them all for protection. Which is probably why I work so hard to protect others even to this day. Even when they don’t want me to.

My son Maddox was a starter on the JV basketball team. The Friday before this particular Monday, he had to miss a basketball game due to a school sanctioned event where his attendance directly impacted his class grade. This wasn’t unusual, although typically avoidable, and the coach had made it quite clear that, on such rare occasions, this was acceptable: “You are a student first.”

But when Maddox showed up for this Monday night game, the coach told him to put on the uniform but he wouldn’t be starting. Since he missed Friday’s game, he wouldn’t be playing at all. He was to sit and watch.

In the stands, I was livid. But as the game went on, I was humbled.

I watched my son cheering for his team, celebrating and clapping for every good play, and even filling up and passing out water to his teammates during timeouts. After the game, I gave him a big hug, looked him in the eyes, and said, “Gosh I’m proud of you. You could’ve pouted, but you didn’t. You served your team with a Christ-like attitude. Goodness, I could not be more proud of you.”

“Thanks dad,” he smirked, “but it wasn’t good enough for coach.”

“Wait, what?” I replied. “What’d ya mean?”

“Well,” he shook his head, “at one of the timeouts, I was standing behind him with water. And I told him…I told him like two or three times, ‘Careful coach, I have water.’ But he didn’t listen, and when he turned around, he bumped me, and I spilled it.”

“Okay,” I responded. “So?”

“Well, then he said, ‘Dangit Maddox, if you’re not smart enough to carry water without spilling it then just don’t pass it out at all.’”

Without thinking or saying another word, I turned and started heading for the locker room.

“Whoa. Hey!” Maddox hollered. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m just going to have a little talk with your coach.”

“What?!?! No.”

“Hey,” I assured him, “I’m not going to be mean. I just want to look him in the eyes. That’s it. I promise.”

“No, Dad.”

“Maddox, I won’t get upset or anything, I promise. I just want to look this man in his eyes.”

“Dad,” he said forcefully. “I want to do this my way. Don’t go talk to him.”

I paused, my eyes imploring my son to trust me, to let me fight for him, to let me protect him. But what I saw looking back was a young man teaching me a lesson about love. Teaching me that sometimes the best way to protect those you love is to listen. Not to try and fix every pain.

A week or so later, I was sitting on my therapist’s couch recounting the event along with other issues I was struggling with. At this point, we’d been meeting for over year, sorting through the wreckage of my past and some impossible situations in my present. Without warning, he asked a question I’ll never forget.

“Shane, who in your life, whether as a kid struggling with how to handle the molestation or as an adult mistreated by people you trusted—who in your life protects you?”

I wept for several long minutes. Even as I tried to recount the question to my wife, I collapsed in her arms weeping. Bitterly. I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t have a name. I couldn’t even convince myself to lie and say, “God.”

I’ve never been protected. I’ve always been the protector. Even for myself. In fact, the last time someone tried to molest me, no parent intervened. No friend fought off my assailant. No teacher or pastor or anyone of authority fought for me. I stabbed the would-be abuser in the foot with a pencil, ending the tense moment.

I protected myself.

And yet, my son revealed to me that I still don’t fully understand the nuances of protecting or being protected. But I’m trying. I’m trying to listen. To my son. To those I love. And not so much to the little boy inside of me still screaming for help.

And maybe that’s why love is so hard for me to fully embrace. To behold in the flesh. To write about in this safe space. For too often I can’t hear what’s being said by those around me because the pain inside me is deafening. Unintentionally self-serving. Refusing to accept that being protected is not the same as being beloved.

Maddox taught me that love listens. Not to my appeals for protection, per se, but to the ancient hymn sung from deep to deep. The sacred space within that contains all I value, all I need, all I truly crave. That contains the holy table where I sit to eat and meet with my God who smiles, hands me another glass, and whispers, “So, Shane: how can I serve you?”

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