By Isaac Megbolugbe
A Lifelong Dedication: To the Keepers of My Spirit and Soul
This reflection is dedicated to the two women who, across the decades, unknowingly held the compass to my heart.
To the one who first awakened my spirit as a teenager: you taught me the purity of a love that asks for nothing in return, a love celebrated as if unto the Lord.
And to the one who electrified my youth and anchored my soul: though time, distance, and silence tested us, your return proved that what is joined at the soul level is never truly lost.
As I stand on the precipice of my 75th birthday, this chapter of The 75 Echoes series honors the enduring mark you both left on my journey toward understanding divine, righteous devotion.
Introduction
As I approach my 75th birthday next year, I find myself looking back at the long, winding road of my life’s emotional and spiritual education. This reflection marks a cornerstone of The 75 Echoes series—a collection of truths gathered across decades. At 74 years old, I have arrived at a profound, unprecedented milestone: for the first time in my life, I am loving the exact same woman simultaneously from my spirit, soul, and body.
Reaching this point required a lifetime of trials, heartbreaks, and an ultimate understanding of what I now call the “geography of love.” It is the realization that all righteous affection must map back to a single source, keeping human desire beautifully aligned with the divine.
The Landscape of the Spirit: Unattainable and Pure
My understanding of love began as a teenager. I fell in love with a girl from my spirit. Even then, I recognized what it meant to love someone as God loves us in the spirit. It was a devotion where you simply wished her the absolute best in life. You celebrated her beautiful appearance and her character as if unto the Lord, appreciating her presence without demanding anything in return.
Because she was older than me and surrounded by mature suitors, I ruled my love for her unrealistic and unattainable. I locked that spiritual appreciation away, expecting it to remain an isolated, beautifully pure memory of my youth, free from the entanglements of the soul or the body.
The Architecture of the Soul: The Neighborhood Encounter
By the early 1970s, a different terrain of love emerged. I fell in love with a girl in my neighborhood who electrified my body. What I did not realize at the time was that this was actually a deep, indelible soul connection. It registered so profoundly within my inner being that my heart became the permanent home to which this love would return, time and over again.
Yet, history repeated itself. When older male relatives came to court her, I ran away, reassuring myself that I could simply love others later in life. But I never did.
Though many women loved me passionately over the decades, I found myself unable to reciprocate from my spirit or my soul. I responded to love in the body, which led to a 40-year marriage that lasted until I was widowed in 2016. Throughout those four decades, the unique, locked chambers of my youth’s spiritual and soulful loves remained dormant, yet entirely intact.
The Danger of Premature Passion: When Soul Met Body
The great disruption—and ultimate education—of my later years occurred when the girl from my youth, the one who held my soul connection, re-entered my life after she, too, was widowed.
Living far apart, she worried about the physical distance between us. To me, the miles mattered little; I had possessed unfettered access to her in my heart for decades through our soul connection. However, as our communication escalated to voice and video, a dormant, highly passionate romantic love manifested.
Without physical proximity to naturally express this affection, the desire intensified into an overwhelming fixation. It transformed into lust, dominating my thoughts and disrupting my faith-based practices. Seeking to protect my spiritual walk, I followed Scripture and denied myself voice and video communication with her.
While this boundaries-first approach protected my own spirit, it deeply wounded my partner, driving her into a state of illness and clinical depression. She could not comprehend why a God of love would keep us apart when our feelings were so mutual and intense. It was during this painful fracture that the true blueprint of the geography of love became clear to me.
Defining the Geography of Love
The geography of love describes the hierarchical spatial organization of beings that are both sources and participants in the ecosystem of love. This ecosystem is not a lawless wilderness; it possesses a rigid, righteous architecture structured as follows:
[ GOD ]
(The Nature & Source of Love)
│
▼
[ THE INNER BEING ]
┌──────────┴──────────┐
▼ ▼
[ THE SPIRIT ] [ THE SOUL ]
(Agape: Loving (Heart-to-Heart
as God loves) Connection)
│ │
└──────────┬──────────┘
▼
[ THE BODY ]
(Romantic & Passionate Love)
- The Supreme Source (God): At the absolute peak of this geography sits God, who is love by nature. He is the ultimate architect and the source of all forms of love with a righteous design.
- The Inner Being (Spirit & Soul): Moving inward, we find the realm of the spirit and the soul. Through His Spirit, we are empowered to love as God loves—this is pure Agape love. Beside it lies the soul, where deep, enduring heart-to-heart connections are registered and stored.
- The Outer Realm (The Body): This is the domain of romantic, passionate love.
We must actively guard against the premature manifestation of romantic or passionate love. When romance is awakened in the body before the righteous pathways of the spirit and soul are fully established and protected, it acts as a trigger for lust. Once lust is triggered, the body fixates, the mind clouds, and there is no longer an easy pathway back to a pure, righteous connection.
The Confluence at 74: Spirit, Soul, and Body Aligned
Now, standing on the precipice of 75, the geography of my life has shifted into perfect alignment. The girl I loved from my spirit as a teenager is also widowed, and she has returned to my life.
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The lessons of the past have prepared me for the present. I know with absolute certainty that I love her from my soul because our heart-to-heart connection is real and enduring. Yet, I have learned the vital importance of protecting the boundaries of passion. By refusing to cross those lines prematurely, I guard our connection against the slide into lust and sin.
At 74, the echoes of my life are no longer discordant. Having anchored my understanding in the spatial hierarchy of God’s design, I am not merely speculating on the nature of romance—I am speaking from a lifelong practice in this field. I finally know both who love is and what love is. I am participating in it righteously, completely integrated—spirit, soul, and body—as if unto the Lord.
Isaac Megbolugbe, Director of GIVA Ministries International. He is a recipient of Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award in business and academia in the United States of America. He is retired professor at Johns Hopkins University, Former Vice President at Fannie Mae, Former Practice Leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. He is resident in the United States of America.
