Is this what it feels like?

Bright lights on brand new eyes and a first gasp of breath. Unfamiliarity whirrs by the tiny newborn baby with the reddish skin and big round eyes as he is passed from rubber gloved hands back to his only companion for the last nine months. He can’t see her very well but can feel her arms comfort and soothe and he knows her voice so well already. In his first moment of life, lungs still unaccustomed to breathing, he wonders to himself for the first time, “Is this what love feels like?”
Everything was fun until he tripped over that rock. Laughing and running on a summer day it came out of nowhere and now the three year old giggling boy had a hole in his jeans and warm blood running down his knee. Oh but Daddy is here, picking him up and holding him close. Daddy is always there when he needs him. Amidst intermittent sobs, the boy thinks to himself from the arms of his father that this is what love must feel like.
She makes fun of him at school because she doesn’t want anyone to know. A big heart drawn in bright red crayon on a sheet of notebook paper folded over eight times was sent across the room in secret. The boy with the blonde hair opens the note, looks up at her, and smiles. Her cheeks turn rosy red and she tells all her friends that this is what love feels like.
He used to love playing baseball, he really did, but now it is not so fun. When daddy said he would be his coach he thought everything was going to be great and that he would finally get to see him but he didn’t know how much daddy like to yell. It wasn’t his fault, honestly, nobody could have hit that pitch. That didn’t stop his coach from screaming his name loud enough for everyone to hear and calling him a girl. “I guess this is what love feels like” the player muttered to himself as he slumped back to the dugout throwing his red cap into the dust below his cleats.
Everyone’s bodies are changing, and some are getting more attention than others. It didn’t take long for the pre-teen girl to realize that the guys in her class seemed to like her more when she wore that particular red shirt with those particular shorts. Looking in the mirror in her bedroom she realized that by just showing a little bit more, she could really know what love felt like.
Her head buried under a pillow drowning out her screaming parents downstairs, she realized that she is never too old to cry. One last slamming of the door and it is all over as her eyes turn red from tears. Now she lives in two different houses but neither of them feel like home and she has convinced herself that all of it was her fault and that’s just how love actually feels.
Drenched in sweat his teammates lift him onto their shoulders and the crowd goes crazy. That was his name they were screaming, and just because of a lucky catch for a lucky win. He could already picture his bright red jersey displayed in the trophy rack of his high school and smiled because now he felt good enough to know what love felt like.
No girl had ever let him go this far before, this time must be the real thing. The lights were dimmed and the movie was over but she was still there with her big red lips inviting him closer. One hand sliding up further than it ever slid before and a quick decision and they were off. He woke up the next morning ready to tell the guys in the locker room all about what love felt like.
He was a really great guy, she couldn’t afford to lose him. No other guy looked at her the way he did and now was the time to show him that she really loved him. One momentary lapse of reason and the red ribbon in her hair was pulled out and everything started moving in a blur. She got caught in the moment that she wished would last a lifetime but faded away the next day when she never saw him again. If this is what love felt like she didn’t want anything to do with it.
School was impossible and the parents just didn’t understand, but thankfully he had his friends. Playing video games downstairs it all started innocent until one guy reached into his pocket. So small and insignificant, but everyone wanted to try it. A couple puffs each and everyone was having a good time telling jokes and laughing with red eyes. This was where he could escape and be with people who actually understood him. He had never felt love anywhere else so he guessed that this is what it must feel like.
Hardly recognizable as human, the man hung bloodied and beaten and on display for the world to see. His body was red with stained blood and open flesh as the nails piercing his hands suspended him against a wooden cross. Insults and saliva flew toward him without relief but he didn’t say a word. He knew that sometimes love had to feel like this. He also knew that soon He would be able to  come down from that cross and wrap His arms around His children and show them what Love really felt like. He would get to show them that the things they thought were love that hurt them so much were never love at all and the things that they experienced in life that felt like love were just a shadow of the real abundant Love He was giving them. Love kept Him up on that cross, and Love took Him off it and sent Him into our lives.