Love is struggle

Jonathan Safran Foer is one of my favorite authors. I love his writing and the way he views life and love and everything in between. I would not recommend him to Christians because ... well...he's too Jewish (LOL) and tends to be either too blunt or unedited in his views, but like I said I like him.

In his book 'Here I am' I found a passage that I will share here simply because it's brilliant:

"Max’s portion was Vayishlach, in which Jacob—the last of the patriarchs—is assaulted by an unknown assailant in the middle of the night. Jacob wrestles him down and refuses to let go, demanding a blessing of him. The assailant—an angel, or God himself—asks, “What is your name?” As Jacob holds on to the man with all his strength, he answers, “Jacob.” (Jacob means “heel-grabber”—he grabbed the heel of his older brother, Esau, as he was being born, wanting to be the first out.) Then the angel says, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel—which means ‘wrestles God.’”
(......) “Jacob wrestled with God for the blessing. He wrestled with Esau for the blessing. He wrestled with Isaac for the blessing, with Laban for the blessing, and in each case he eventually prevailed. He wrestled because he recognized that the blessings were worth the struggle. He knew that you only get to keep what you refuse to let go of.
“Israel, the historical Jewish homeland, literally means ‘wrestles God.’ Not ‘praises God,’ or
‘reveres God,’ or ‘loves God,’ not even ‘obeys God.’ In fact, it is the opposite of ‘obeys God.’ Wrestling is not only our condition, it is our identity, our name.”
(....)
“But what is wrestling?”
(....)
“There is Greco-Roman wrestling, WWF wrestling, arm wrestling, sumo wrestling, lucha libre
wrestling, wrestling with ideas, wrestling with faith … They all have one thing in common: closeness.”
(....)
“You only get to keep what you refuse to let go of,”(....)
(.....)
“Closeness,” he said, surveying the congregation. “It’s easy to be close, but almost impossible to stay close. Think about friends. Think about hobbies. Even ideas. They’re close to us—sometimes so close we think they are part of us—and then, at some point, they aren’t close anymore. They go away. Only one thing can keep something close over time: holding it there. Grappling with it. Wrestling it to the ground, as Jacob did with the angel, and refusing to let go. What we don’t wrestle we let go of. Love isn’t the absence of struggle. Love is struggle.”

- Here I am, by Jonathan Safran Foer