Like a week that's only Mondays. Only ice cream, never sundaes.

My brain pulled a no-no this evening while I was feeling down in the dumps. I had just watched The Wiz with my roommates, and the Tin Man's line "Nobody home in soulville" started turning my brain.

"Maybe," said my brain, "life would be better if there were no one home in soulville, if we were to live without love. Because then you wouldn't know what you were missing out on when you love people who don't seem to love you back or to love you as much as you love them."

It actually sounded pretty good at the time. But don't worry, keep reading, this story has a happy ending.

See, I love Love too much to be able to keep thinking this could be a good pattern for life. Love itself makes me very happy. Love is so inherently good that it could never really cause problems.

Okay, so you say it's not Love, but Unreciprocated Love that causes pain and heartache. Well for me, the most painful thing is not what others have or have not done in response to my loving them, but rather, the lies that Satan has fed to me about the reasons why they may not have returned the favor.

"Sure, maybe you're pretty to you, but other people might not think so."

"Sure, you're a pretty good person, but you're not good enough. You don't serve enough. You're not nice enough. You're not smart enough. You're not cute enough. You're not witty enough. You don't know enough about sports." (Yes, he's thrown that one at me, as ridiculous as it sounds. He threw it at me, and I couldn't, or didn't, dodge it. And it hurt!)

But that's the dirty dirty game he plays. He trash-talks like crazy, telling you that you can't win. He throws everything negative at you and drowns you in it. He doesn't give the positive any room to breathe. It's like when you jump too far into the Ball Crawl or a foam pit and it takes you a really long time to get out because you kind of just go straight to the bottom. Or maybe it's like when you're really drowning, but that's just too morbid.

Anyway, he drowns/suffocates/blinds/does other bad things to you with everything negative so it seems like you are stuck in an impossible situation, like everything in the world is going against you and your only defenses are the tears in your eyes and that Dove chocolate bar. And sometimes not even that chocolate bar.

I guess it is times like these when I need to remember that I do have a greater defense. The greatest tool, in fact, for kicking Satan out of my life.

What is it, you ask?
Well, Love, of course!

["Why didn't you list that among our assets in the first place?"]

See, just off the top of my head and maybe a little off the back of it, I could name over 100 people that love me. At least, I'm just assuming that all my first cousins love me. Maybe that's a stretch, but throw in the distant relatives, aunts, uncles, grandparents, siblings, parents, and my good friends, and we've certainly got at least that first 100 covered. And most importantly, I've got the love of the Greatest of All. My Father in Heaven and His Son, Jesus Christ, love me.

How could I have thought for one second that life could be good without that Love, or without the knowledge of that Love? So, Satan, consider yourself banished. I don't want to put up with your junk anymore! Maybe I'll even file for a restraining order.

In all seriousness, though, I am so grateful to know of the perfect Love that the Father has for me. I know that I have been blessed with the ability to love, and however imperfectly I may do so, I am going to try my hardest to always love. And to never forget or question again just how sacred the gift of Love truly is. I love Love!