Francesca Battistelli

I love deeply. I don’t how else to do it. I find it utterly impossible to love halfway. I just can’t do shallow. I want to shower the people I love with gifts, with letters, with hugs, with encouragement and pride and smiles. I want to shout their greatness from the rooftops. I want to give myself fully to the ones I love. “Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). This is what love is all about.

Have you ever felt so full of love that you don’t know how to contain yourself? You can’t figure out how you’re still alive, how you’re still standing, and how you’re not yet blown into a million pieces by the love you feel for another person. I’ve felt it, and it is more real than anything I’ve ever known. It’s a paradox, though, that the greatest most deep-seated love can feel so much like sorrow. Truly, one can love someone so much that their heart is bursting with joy, and that joy can make one weep just as strongly as if they were deprived of that love. I know this too, because I’ve been at both ends of the spectrum. I don’t know why love is like this, but I do know that anything worth having is worth fighting for. True love always involves some kind of sacrifice, sorrow, and pain. Just look at Jesus’ life. Love attained is that much sweeter for the fight it takes to attain it.

 
I’m in Nashville this week writing, and I think I may try to tackle this with some of the folks I’m writing with—this epic language of love. I’ll let you know what I come out with. Feel free to leave your thoughts here.

Blessings,
Francesca