Falling in Love
I’ve fallen in love many times, in many ways. If God is love, I suspect falling in love is one of the godliest things we do. If we don’t know love we don’t know God.
I can’t remember the first time I fell in love. It happened before I could walk, talk, or perhaps recall. As far back as I can remember, I have been in love with my sister. You read that correctly. Falling in love platonically is something I wholeheartedly embrace. I have no recollection of an existence without her, nor without me loving her. I spent the first decade of my life in her shadows. I say that with gratitude. Large shadows meant freedom from the spotlight. I had no interest in the spotlight. The spotlight meant relentless criticisms and judgments. She performed in the rigidity of the spotlight while I danced freely in the shadows. I loved her for the large shadows she cast. I eventually outgrew her shadows, but even still, we’ve remained best of friends. We’ve loved each other through marital strife, pregnancies, jobs, trauma, illness, triumph, and every other experience you could imagine sisters sharing. She is my partner in life and death.
The second time I fell in love was much different. I was fifteen years old when I fell madly in love with my boyfriend. He was seventeen with an athletic build, broad shoulders, olive skin, and blues eyes. It was a young, passionate love, but certainly not void of depth and intimacy. He was my best friend. Even two decades later he still occasionally appears in my dreams―forever teenagers. When you fall in love with someone you never stop loving them. I suspect I’ll always be in love with those memories of us―what was, what could have been, and what never was.
When I was eighteen, I left home to go to school in Provo, Utah. It was there I met another man. He was twenty-two with dirty blonde hair and the lean build of a competitive runner. The first time we met I informed him I was in love with someone else, so whatever he was selling I wasn’t interested. I was rather assertive teenager. He assured me he was only interested in friendship, so with unassuming innocence we embarked on a friendship. It wasn’t long until I fell in love with his irreverent humor and quiet confidence. However, in a world made for twos, three is perceived as misbehaving. Falling in love with a new lover meant I must say good-bye to my other.
Marriage meant letting go of the first man I fell in love with. It was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do at that point. I wasn’t just losing a lover, but a friend. In my first year of marriage I spent more than one evening crying on the bathroom floor over the loss. My husband would always be sharing my heart. Luckily, I didn’t marry a vain and jealous man. He never made me feel badly for loving plurally.
Over the next ten years of marriage, I fell in love three more times. Only this time it was far more immersive, consuming, and challenging than anything I had previously experienced. First, I fell in love with our son, then another son, and then our daughter. I didn’t know my heart had the capacity to love so selflessly. Without question, I would give my life for any one of them. I’d kill for them and not even contemplate the ethical dilemma. I was just like any other animal with the same primal instincts as any other mother. I would protect my young at any cost. The love and devotion I had for my children not only showed me selflessness, but also the power of unbridled loyalty. Love could change from beautiful to horrifying in a matter or moments. Parental love served as a gateway into the dark and wonderous corners of my soul. Suddenly, harnessing the power and passions of love seemed just as relevant as the expression of it.
Not too much later, I fell in love again, but not with a person. On a cold and snowy day, I found myself high on the mountain side leaning against a coniferous tree. I began to pray. Praying in the woods always seemed more appropriate than in the pews. I took off my glove and ran my bare skin across the bark of the tree. The tree kindly greeted me back along with the animals and insects that lived there. I found God in the tree—the insects, the animals, the snow, the sun, the pine needles, the rocks. All of them were connected to me and I with them. I realized in that moment God was everywhere. I breathed steady heaves with the earth. As a loyal mother she didn’t just breathe for me, but every other terran creature depending on her. I fell in love with the earth that day. Whether I wander through the Utah desert, California Redwoods, Florida coast, or Cascade Mountains, I find myself falling more in love with her at each encounter. Sometimes I think she might love me back.
Eventually, I fell in love with a woman who existed only in my imagination. Both her presence and absence haunted me. I saw her everywhere, yet she was nowhere. Sometimes being in love feels like you’re suffocating. There were days I couldn’t blink without tears spilling from my eyes lids. It’s said that grief is love with nowhere to go, and so it was true of her. The love I had for her had no outlet other than tears of grief. She was the composite of the high school crush I never asked to dance, the girlfriend I never kissed, and the wife I never married. I mourned her loss like a death—the death of a billion potentialities of a life I would never have. I’ve tried to understand why I would be blessed with the capacity to love beyond borders but told never to exercise that love with the woman I love just as much as any man.
Somewhere in the madness of falling in and out of love, I unwittingly fell in love with my Church. I didn’t think I could ever truly love something I was betrothed to. For as angry and frustrating as my church is I cannot deny our arranged marriage harvested genuine affection. I fell, and I fell hard. I didn’t realize just how deeply I loved my church until it became my abuser. Falling in love with an abuser is a painful, disorienting, and confusing experience that I don’t wish on anyone. It’s like breaking up with someone you’re still in love with when they wish to erase you. I would know.
Finding a way to keep Mormonism alive while removing the abusive aspects of my Church was difficult. With painstaking precision, I felt like a surgeon trying to carefully remove a cancerous tumor from a healthy organ. At times I wondered if saving what I loved was worth the effort. Why don’t I just let it all die and find something new to love? I still don’t know, but most days love keeps me hopeful that Mormonism is worthy of my loyalty and devotion, even if flawed institutions aren’t.
I suspect there will be much more falling in and out of love in my future. I don’t think falling in love is something that ends or something you grow out of. However, it makes me wonder and contemplate how the gods love. I suspect gods became gods because they learned to love when loving wasn’t easy. They learned to love their siblings, lovers, spouses, children, ideas, environment, and even enemies. They learned to navigate the complexities of falling in love, including bridling passions and embracing new expressions. Every time I fall in love, I learn a little bit more about God.
