Love

Love

    If you are searching for validity of God, and are not inclined to blind faith, then you need only look towards your self for confirmation. Most everyone, at one point in their lives, has known all the proof they need that God does exist.
 
    I do not consider myself an extremely religious man but I do believe strongly in God. I was raised Roman Catholic by my grandparents and attended mass every Sunday, never an altar boy, but did become a Knight of Columbus at the age of nineteen. My grandmother was the truly devout of our family and insisted that my grandfather and I go to church with her, so of course we did.
   
    At the age of forty-five my grandmother had her first of twelve heart attacks and at forty-seven was given two years to live by her doctor. She was diabetic, had extremely high blood pressure, and was stricken with angina attacks often. Her myriad of health problems alone would have caused me to question the existence of God, but, to my knowledge, she never did. Seventeen years after her first heart attack she suffered her last as she was climbing into bed. This was a turning point in my life; I became bitter towards God then stopped believing altogether. I missed her so much, as did my grandfather; neither him nor I attended our church again until the day I was reading a prayer at his funeral sixteen years later.

    Two events, in my life, confirmed the existence of God; they cannot be denied or explained away by science; they are as plain as the nose on my face. Love, in both instances, was the proof that a higher power is about us, I know it sounds corny and unmanly, but when I seriously sit and think about God and his or her existence it becomes clear. Please don’t dismiss me as a religious zealot, I’m not, I still don’t attend church or read anyone’s bibles as I don’t believe anyone on earth has the answers for me. I do not want to offend peoples faith’s as I’m sure they feel as strongly about their belief as I do about my own.

    Many theories have been debated since the beginning of civilization trying to disprove Gods existence; some of them are quite sound and can be drawn up in laboratories as proof. Love is the wildcard, big bang cannot explain it, chemistry cannot, biology cannot, astrology, DNA testing, quantum physics, or mathematics; not one of these studies can come up with a legitimate explanation for the exclusively human condition we call love.
We grow up loving our parents and probably take that love for granted as it has been there since infancy.  Although I do love my parents and my wife, these are not the cases that convinced me of Gods existence.

    The two events, which I draw upon as proof, both came as complete surprises to me. The first was my first love, a girl I dated for four years before I met my wife. What made this love an epiphany was its unexpected instantaneousness. I was at a restaurant with my best friend; we were having lunch outside at one of the picnic tables. Nothing about this day was, up to this point, out of the ordinary, I happened to glance over toward a table that was placed in the shade of a tree. Three girls sat there laughing and eating lunch, as I looked over, one of the girls looked from her friends directly at me.
BOOM, nothing like this had ever happened to me before. Instantly, one glance changed me forever. She smiled at me and went back to her conversation with her friends. I don’t think, during lunch, I heard another word my friend said. I could not stop myself from looking over there, and was caught a number of times by the girl, she’d only smile. Eventually my friend noticed something was going on and asked me about it. I normally would have felt ridiculous telling him what I did, but I was in such a state that I didn’t care. I asked him if he knew who the girl was, and he said “no.”
      I then said, “Man, I am in love. She’s going to be my girlfriend.”
  He chuckled a little and we carried on with our lunch, eventually the girls finished their lunch and got up to leave. Normally, I have never been confident enough to initiate conversation with women, but this was like no other day, I just stood up and walked up to her and said “hi.” She said “hi” back; we talked for a few minutes while our friends waited, I asked for, and received her phone number and we made plans to talk later that night. I was immediately in love, no question about it, seriously, foolishly, passionately in love. We went out for four years; eventually we did break up, as we were both too young to realize what we had. Today, seventeen years later, I still hold only the fondest of memories of those four years.

    I met my wife a year and a half after my ex girlfriend and I broke up. She was divorced with a two-year-old daughter and before long we moved in together. Love did not break down the gates this time, It grew slowly but surely until it was as strong as a lion. We lived happily in a two-bedroom apartment for a year; one day my wife surprised me with news that she was pregnant; this shocked and scared me deeply. I was only twenty-six years old, that’s way too young to be having a baby. That, of course, was ridiculous; if the world waited for men to be ready for children, our planet would be unpopulated within a generation. We spent the next nine months preparing, bought a house and a new vehicle. The idea of having a baby still would not sink in, I was scared, worried, and a little angry that this was happening too me. 11pm November 27 1993 my wife climbed out of the shower and called me into the bathroom,
      “We need to go to the hospital right now” was all she needed to say. I knew what that meant. She calmly got dressed while I frantically ran around the house accomplishing nothing. 1:04am November 28 1993 my daughter was born, a half hour later I was brought into a room where a nurse was washing a tiny baby in a small tub, she quickly dried the baby, wrapped her tightly in a blanket, and walked over to me.
      “Hey little beautiful one, meet your daddy.” She said, and handed this small wrapped package to me. I gently received the bundle and looked down at the little “Yoda” face.
BOOM, every worry, and every concern I had was gone, instantly replaced by a feeling that your life makes sense, has meaning and direction. I truly wonder if anyone has loved another person as much as I instantly loved my little girl. How empty a life must be without that feeling.
 
    Neither epiphany, at the time, had manifested themselves for what they were. Only, years later, as I was drawn back towards God, did they became apparent. Contemplation of faith and eternal life re-entered my thoughts as I witnessed courageous battles by two that I love. First, my wife, and then my grandfather, one survived and one did not. Through those trying times, those two instances of love at first sight raised, in me, a dilemma; If God does not exist, how could my heart have gone from not knowing a person to magnificent love for them overnight? That question alone caused the first crack in the dam of atheism. From there, internal questions flooded me about love and God and science.

      The miracle that is love; no scientist or laboratory can create it, no theory can explain it. There is only one legitimate answer, GOD, as a GIFT, gave man LOVE.