When you read that what does it say to you? Have you ever been in love? Really and TRULY been in love? I asked myself that very question and if I’m quite honest the answer may very well be no for me. I have loved and been loved in return but not to that description that you see above.

Love is kind? Love does not envy? Love is patient? Love does not insist in having its own way?

Ay. Talking about starting over at square one with my idea on true amore.

I went back to church on Sunday and as I was walking up the gravel road to the campus (Yes I wore more sensible shoes this time) I started thinking about love. Like what does it really mean? In any situation whether it be a friend, family, lover,  some random person you cross paths with…. What is love really all about? Sure enough God popped up and said hello to me just in the unexpected way he had before in this church. One of the greeters handed me a pamphlet with an infectious grin on her face and inside was this….

HOLY FORREST GUMP MOMENT! “Somethang bite meeeey!” I mean geeeeez! That discussion on sabotage isn’t until next Sunday but you bet your sweet little tush that I will be there!!! That little card was enough to peak my attention even more as to what was filling my heart inside this church’s walls. It describes more of my notion of love than is comfortable for me to admit.

The current service I was attending was all about love and how we should love each other as God wants us to.  Freely and openly and even if we don’t really want to. Normally, or at least I have been guilty of this, we think of love as Valentines day, wedding vows, marriage, Hallmark cards and warm fuzzies. While those are all forms of love I had never put into perspective that real love is different.  its oh o much more that I thought. In love I have been unkind, I have been selfish, I have been jealous. Man that sucks to write and realize that. As many times as I have uttered the words, have I ever been woman enough to do more than just say them? One thought keeps creeping into my mind while I yearn for this one thing in my life that seems to elude me.

To receive love you have to live in love.

Now that to me is a smack you in the face kind of thought. Maybe love isn’t just meant to be solely felt in those three words that we so often throw around without real meaning.  For me its beginning to mean being n love with life.

Being in love wit that unexpected cool breeze during my run when I was letting my mind distract me from how pretty the weather was.

Being in love with how friggin cute my dog is when she gets all spastic and wants to play when I’m in the middle of doing my abs.

Being in love with how many AMAZING friends that have been placed in my life. That have saved my life.

Being in love with my career that I have worked so hard for.

Being in love with my Mommy and how she prays EVERYDAY for my happiness so much that sometimes she sacrifices her own.

Bottom line is that I think, I hope, I PRAY that I’m onto something here. I want to live life in love no matter the circumstance. No matter the road that God is leading me towards. I am not going to be unrealistic and say that all my bitterness and resentment has floated away but I’m workin’ on it. Its been a long time coming so it won’t happen overnight. But this much I can say. I am closer than I was before.

~ LOVE and Hugs and Smiles~ R!LEY COUTURE

This is a tough one for me to write. I’m not really sure about how I can dance around the subject so I’ll just come out with it. Lately I have been truly questioning my faith in GOD. Yes the girl that has a Cross, The Dove Of Peace, and Psalm 27:14 forever inked on her body is unsure as to whether or not GOD is truly listening. It seems as though my life for the past five years…or maybe even longer than that has been littered with heartache. Now I know that my kind of heartache could be considered a day at Disneyland in comparison to what TRUE heartache looks like, but in my selfish world I feel like I have cried a lot of tears.

As I type this my mind starts to run away from me as to why I began writing in the first place. Oh yea, feather-like faith.

I have always believed in GOD because its what I was raised with. Perhaps that’s not entirely true. I believed in God enough to ask him for good things, enough to praise him when good things came around. But never enough to trust him when I was in the dumps. I would always turn to a friend, boyfriend or whatever else I could grasp onto to give me the pep talk that would give me strength for another day. As you can probably tell that hasn’t worked out so well for me.

I’m not going to go into detail about the array of crap that has gone down in my life that most recently brought me to this point because in all honesty its the same shit different day. I’m about to be 32 in a week. Where does this chaos end?

With God? Er… WITH GOD!

I am supposed to say that with gusto and certainty right? I’m ashamed to say but that has been hard for me. I never thought I would admit that for whomever in reading this to see.  But there ya have it.

So tonight something happened. I’m not gonna call it a monumental change in me because I still feel pretty heavy. But something did in fact happen. I decided to go back to church tonight and try out this new one called Crosspoint. Its big with lots of stage trappings, sound systems, and a HUGE amount of people go and worship there. That had me a little timid but I needed to ask God a few things. So I went.

I pull up to the packed parking lot where volunteers are waving the cars to a far away lot in the back. I’m thinking boy did I ever wear the wrong type of shoes for this. Typical me. My mind is suppose to be on God and I’m thinking about my shoes. I start trekking up to the church campus on a gravel road and notice a group of women and their kids getting into a golf cart shuttle. I keep walking thinking there wasn’t going to be room for me, but just then a beautiful lady calls out to me and says “There’s room for one more. Save your shoes!” Well then…that’s my kind of lady! I get in and sort of mindlessly listen to their conversation about how their little girls wanted to sit in the back of the golf cart. The women were joking about how when you grow up and have kids that you have to give up things like Pop Tarts and sitting in the back of the golf cart to let the kids have their fun. I though that was so unselfishly adorable. I often envy people like this lady and  wonder why I can’t be so selfless and take pleasure in small things like Pop Tarts. I haven’t had a Pop Tart in yeeeaaars!

There I go again. Getting off track.

Back to Feather-like Faith. So as the service started it was much of the same for me. The songs were wonderful and uplifting and I started to cry. My eyeballs burst open like Niagara falls anytime I go to church. Something this time was different though. I felt empty, with no connection to where I was and what was happening around me. I figured for sure that even though my faith was fragile that I would get to church and feel it all come upon me like a cleansing wave. Nope. Wasn’t happening and it was scaring the hope right out of me that I couldn’t feel anything but pain. I gave it another song or two and finally sat down among this sea of standing believers and started to pray in the most honest way that I could.

“God are you there?” “God why don’t you love me anymore?” “God why can’t I feel you?” “God please touch me and let me know you are there.” “God I am here waiting for you.”

That’s when some thing that could only be described as a wicked coincidence or God answering me happened. I’m  thinking it has to be the latter.

As I sat there with my head down and my hands clasped together I felt someone hugging me from behind. It was a woman and she was frail but so warm in her embrace that I started to bawl. She held me a little while longer as I tried to catch my breath and whispered in my ear “God put me in that carriage next to you for a reason and it wasn’t because of your shoes.”

WOA. Whaaaaaaaaat? I was stunned, hopeful and blubbering with tears at this point. The lady from the golf cart! I was still trying to process and get a hold of my waterworks when she she said something that I couldn’t quite make out over the singing but I think she said “God wants you to know that he’s here with you.”

This only made me sob harder but she she held onto me and let me weep. The thing is, that even though this was a perfect stranger I held onto her as if my life in that moment depended on it. I dunno perhaps it did. There is something to that. Trusting in a perfect stranger promising me that God has this thing I call life handled. Isn’t faith all about trust?

Another song began and I was able to stand but this angel was’t going to leave my side just yet. She jumped over the row and stood beside me, letting me know that she AND God were still there.  She stayed beside me though the rest of the song and the short service. After the lights came on we talked a bit and she told me her name. Lisa. Which is my Aunts name as well. Lisa told me that if I wanted a family to worship with that I could be part of her family. Tears came in waves again. She hand wrote her number on a little card and told me it was not a cell  but her house number where she could be found 90% of the time. She asked for my number and wrote it on another little card and put it back into her purse that I noticed was filled with Christian books. I then gave her another gripping hug which was returned with the same strength and I said goodbye and that I hoped to hear from her soon. Which I have no doubt that I will.

As for my Feather-like Faith? I can’t say that it is completely restored to where it should be but I will say this. Thank you GOD for small miracles.

~ Hugs and Smiles ~ Raquel Segarra