I don’t know
what it is, but I am a fan of even just the word “love”.
But lately…I
have been wondering…What is love?
We see
different views of it everywhere we look…movies, television, songs, poems, even
our day to day relationships reflect different views of it.
I was
watching TV the other day and there was a preview on for one of those shows
where the “lover” turns completely psycho and kills the other person…or the
others person’s lover...or something like that, I don’t really know. The only
thing I remember the lady on the TV saying was: “Love makes you do crazy
things” and I just thought…no...being crazy makes you do crazy things…and being
a complete psycho makes you murder someone. Yes, I agree…being with a certain type
of someone can make you feel like you are going crazy. But chances are, this
person, or you yourself, were unhealthy to begin with, and those unhealthy
habits or tendencies were just brought into the relationship, causing it to be
unhealthy…and…crazy.
Where do we
get these horrible beliefs and ideas from?!
At what age
do we learn that “love” makes us legitimately crazy and paranoid?
And when is
it that we start to confuse our insecurities with our “love” for others?
I wish I
knew, so I could go to every being at that age and stop that belief from
entering their mind and instead, instilling a more healthy view.
Sadly
though, there is no definite “age” at which we are taught this…some just
simply, begin to believe it.
Maybe it is
because we let ourselves become involved with people who say they “love” us but
their actions show us otherwise.
Or maybe it
is because we have never known consistency in our lives, and the only example
of “love” which we have, is a broken family.
Or…maybe it
really is because we listen to too much secular music and watch too much
secular tv and slowly let the ideas of what we see leak into our minds and “brainwash”
us…(Sorry Rihanna…no matter how much “Birthday Cake” you give him, Chris Brown
will never love you)
I’m definitely
not saying that I know all there is to know about love.
I’m only
saying…God is love. And God is not crazy.
The ONLY consistent,
pure place we are able to find love, is in Christ. And it is only by the grace
of Christ that we are able to experience this sort of love in our
relationships.
One of my
absolute favorite songs is “Oh My Dear” by Tenth Avenue North.
The lyrics
of the song don’t only portray the most beautiful vision of a relationship
between two people, but I cannot help but to also be directed to God’s love as
well every time I hear it.
I encourage
you to look up the song to listen to it:
“I called you up, you were in bed, could
barely make out the words that you said. But you wanted to see me instead, so I
got dressed.
And I stepped out into the snow and walked
for a mile or so. Felt the rush of blood come from the cold, in my chest.
Well you finally came to the door and we
talked for an hour or more. Until I asked if you would stay up till four, you
said that’s fine.
But you said, ‘There’s something I have to
say, and I can’t because I’m just so afraid’ and so I held you as you started
to shake, that night.
Oh my dear, I will wait for you. Grace,
tonight, will pull us through.
Until the tears have left your eyes, until
the fear can sleep at night. Until the demons that you’re scared of disappear
inside.
Until the scale begins to crack and the
weight falls from your back. Oh my dear, I’ll keep you in my arms tonight.
You slowly lifted your head from your hands.
You said, ‘I just don’t think that you’ll understand. You’ll never look at me
that way again, if you knew what I did.’
And so your tears fell and melted the snow.
You told me secrets nobody had known, but I never loved you more even though
now I knew what you did.
Oh my dear, I will wait for you. And grace,
tonight, will pull us through. Oh my dear, I will wait for you. And grace,
tonight, will pull us through.
Until the tears have left your eyes, until
the fears can sleep at night. Until the demons that you’re scared of disappear
inside.
Until the scale begins to crack and the
weight falls from your back. Oh my dear, I’ll keep you in my arms until the
tears have left your eyes. Until the fears can sleep at night. Until the demons
that you’re scared of, disappear inside.
Until the scale begins to crack and the
weight falls from your back. Oh my dear, I’ll keep you in my arms tonight.”
Love is such
a beautiful thing.
I have been
reminded more and more lately of how amazing it really can be.
Those
relationships that make us feel in bondage or suffocated – those aren’t what we
are meant to feel when we experience love.
If we find
freedom in Christ, then we find freedom in love as well.
Yes,
unfortunately, relationships can be extremely difficult, and it is a guarantee
that we will get hurt in them at one point or another…
We aren’t
perfect, and as long as we are on this earth, we never will be.
But we are
still commanded to love one another.
So, love,
being a command, is a choice.
So…………what else
is love?!
A few weeks
ago, I wrote a letter.
In the
letter, I, in a way, described what love is to me.
The words
“shallow” and “surfacey” would not be far definitions from my explanations of
love in the letter…but they are more the “simple things” that I find love in…
Some of the
letter goes (something) like this:
“Love, to
me, is not trying to make myself perfect for someone else or trying to get
myself completely together before I let anyone love me. It’s knowing that I am
accepted no matter what condition I am in. It’s going through the hard times
and going through the struggles with the other person. It’s growing together
and learning together.
Anyone could
support another person financially and buy them things and provide for them.
Love is
being there for someone – no matter what. It’s holding someone when they’re
hurting and laughing with them when they’re happy. It’s spending quality time
together and listening to all of their hopes and dreams. It’s encouraging them
in their work, mourning with them through their failures, and celebrating with
them in their accomplishments.
Love is
making me feel beautiful even when we both know I look my absolute worst. It’s
putting up with me even when I’m being the most annoying person in the world.
It’s holding me when I’m sick and staying up late talking. It’s cuddling with
me on the couch watching Disney movies. It’s going on hikes and being adventurous.
It’s sitting at home doing nothing. It’s calling me right back just to tell me
you miss me, after we just hung up from being on the phone for 3 hours. It’s
going to family events and talking to crazy relatives. It’s meeting in the
middle of the night just to say hi. It’s laying aside my selfish desires and
making someone else happy. It’s turning off my favorite episode of The Vampire
Diaries because you want to show me something I would usually have absolutely
no interest in if it were anyone else but you showing it to me. It’s lying next
to each other for hours just staring into each other’s eyes, even if nothing is
being said. It’s simple. It’s natural.
It’s
lingering and drawing out a ‘goodbye’ even when I know I’ll see you again the
very next day.
Love is not
working to make your life perfect without someone – It’s realizing that your
life will only be incomplete until you have that someone.”
These
things, to me, are just an ounce of what love means. This letter was more of
just a reminder to myself…
Love is not
based off of feelings – maybe how much we “like” someone is based off of that,
but if you love someone – you love them no matter what – obviously they need to
treat you right…it’s never okay to let yourself become a doormat or a punching
bag – I would NEVER condone that – but there may be times when you really don’t
like someone because of something they have said or done – but if you love them
– you work through it together.
I was
watching Cake Boss tonight...(hahaha yes…”here it comes…”) and they made a cake
for a couple’s 75th wedding anniversary.
75 years.
At the end
of this month, I will be 24…those people have been together more than 3 times
my lifetime! That is CRAZY!
I never
could have imagined being with someone for that long…
Until
lately.
Something
changed in me…
Now, I
cannot wait to be with someone else for 1 year or 2 years or 24 or 75 years!
If that
person is my best friend, which I know he will be, then I really cannot wait.
I can’t wait
to laugh with him and cry with him. I can’t wait to play practical jokes on him
and goof off with him. I can’t wait to just be there for him and be a part of
his life…
The old
couple on Cake Boss was asked the question “What’s the secret of being married
for that long?”
And the wife
said “Secret? There’s no secret! When times get hard, you just stay and work
through things instead of walking out.”
I saw the
below picture on Pinterest a few weeks ago. Little fact: Normally, when I see
marriage crap on Pinterest…I get so annoyed. “Okay little girl, you’re 13 years
old…let’s wait until your adult teeth come in before you create a whole board dedicated
to your extremely-far-off future wedding…” Rude. I know. But I never was the
girl who obsessed over my wedding growing up. In fact…I never even really gave
it too much thought, and the older I got, the less I wanted to ever get
married.
But now…I
absolute cannot wait for this:
Okay…I
really have NO idea how this entry turned into me wanting to get married…that
is definitely not how I originally intended this to go…
Haha…
Anywho...
Back to
love.
I’m not
meaning to specifically single out the example of marriage, or even love in the
romantic sense…I actually started this post with the intention of speaking
about love in the form of freedom and forgiveness and grace…
So without
providing further opportunity for me to gush about my excitement of marriage…I
should probably just jump to this:
One of the
greatest characteristics of love, I believe, is freedom in grace:
“In Christ
we are set free by the blood of his death, and so we have forgiveness of sins.”
– Ephesians 1:7
“Jesus spoke
of freedom, but he spoke of a different kind of freedom: the type of freedom
that comes not through power but through submission. Not through control but
through surrender. Not through possessions but through open hands.
God wants to emancipate his people;
he wants to set them free. He wants his people to be not slaves but sons. He
wants them governed not by law but by love.
We have been liberated from our own
guilt and our own legalism. We have the freedom to pray and the freedom to love
the God of our heart. And we have been forgiven by the only one who could
condemn us. We are truly free!”
-
Max Lucado, Walking with the Savior
Because
Christ has forgiven me and everything that I have done and will do…I am called
to forgive others…
I realized
today, that I have been so prideful lately.
I have been
hurting…for quite awhile now…because of something that someone did. This person
did not even do this directly towards me…but to someone else that I love. And I
have been so prideful towards them, and even outright rude and disrespectful.
I try to be
sweet…I really do. I love being my sweet, kindhearted self – but the truth is –
that is all God.
I
myself...my flesh…am utterly disgusting. I’m rude, arrogant, hard-hearted,
prideful, judgmental, unforgiving…and so many other things. And this is exactly
how I have been acting towards this person.
I’m so
ashamed of it. And I fight it every day.
What’s so
gross is – that if my heart really is kind and pure…I would surrender this
pride and judgment to Christ and allow Him to give me His strength and His
love. Yet…I fight to keep this perspective on things. I fight to keep this
stubborn thinking. I fight to…keep fighting. I fight to…keep sinning.
Sick.
And
yet…Christ still shows me grace in the things that I do…
“You gave me
life and showed me kindness, and in your care you watched over my life.” – Job
10:12
“Discipline
is easy for me to swallow. Logical to assimilate. Manageable and appropriate.
But God’s grace? Anything but. Examples? How much time do you have?
David the psalmist becomes David the
voyeur, but by God’s grace becomes David the psalmist again.
Peter denied Christ before he
preached Christ.
Zacchaeus, the crook. The cleanest
part of his life was the money he’d laundered. But Jesus still had time for
him.
The thief on the cross: hell-bent
and hung-out-to-die one minute, heaven-bound and smiling the next.
Story after story. Prayer after
prayer. Surprise after surprise. Seems that God is looking more for ways to get
us home than for ways to keep us out. I challenge you to find one soul who came
to God seeking grace and did not find it”
-
Max Lucado, When God Whispers Your Name
(Side note:
The other day I struggled with the following thought:
Sometimes…I
just want to reach perfection. I want to be pure in thoughts and actions and be
full of grace and love in everything that I do.
In my mind –
it’s okay for me to feel this way, because I know I can just as easily tell
myself that I am not meant to be perfect, and that I just need to lean on
Christ.
But if
someone else were feeling this way…especially someone I really cared about…I
would be heart broken. No one should ever feel like they have to be perfect…)
Just like
love is a choice…Hate is also a choice.
So today…and
the next day…and the day after that…
“I choose
love. No occasion justifies hatred; no injustice warrants bitterness. I choose
love. Today I will love God and what God loves.”
-
Max Lucado (of course…)
My favorite
devotional on love:
“’Love
suffers long and is kind . . .’ —1 Corinthians 13:4
Love
is not premeditated—it is spontaneous; that is, it bursts forth in
extraordinary ways. There is nothing of precise certainty in Paul’s description
of love. We cannot predetermine our thoughts and actions by saying, “Now I will
never think any evil thoughts, and I will believe everything that Jesus would
have me to believe.” No, the characteristic of love is spontaneity. We don’t
deliberately set the statements of Jesus before us as our standard, but when
His Spirit is having His way with us, we live according to His standard without
even realizing it. And when we look back, we are amazed at how unconcerned we
have been over our emotions, which is the very evidence that real spontaneous
love was there. The nature of everything involved in the life of God in us is
only discerned when we have been through it and it is in our past.
The
fountains from which love flows are in God, not in us. It is absurd to think
that the love of God is naturally in our hearts, as a result of our own nature.
His love is there only because it “has been poured out in our hearts by the
Holy Spirit . . .” (Romans 5:5).
If
we try to prove to God how much we love Him, it is a sure sign that we really
don’t love Him. The evidence of our love for Him is the absolute spontaneity of
our love, which flows naturally from His nature within us. And when we look
back, we will not be able to determine why we did certain things, but we can
know that we did them according to the spontaneous nature of His love in us.
The life of God exhibits itself in this spontaneous way because the fountains
of His love are in the Holy Spirit.”
-My Utmost for His Highest
Don’t do
something stupid out of pain.
Don’t say
something mean or selfish, that you will regret, out of hurt and confusion.
Don’t spend
your present and future wishing you could undo your past.
Just simply
love
Look to God
for wisdom and peace.
And just
love.
1 Corinthians 13
The Greatest
Gift
"1 Though I speak
with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become
sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the
gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and
though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I
am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,
and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love suffers
long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is
not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is
not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices
in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all
things, endures all things.
8 Love never
fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there
are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will
vanish away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But
when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done
away.
11 When I was a
child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but
when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see
in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall
know just as I also am known.
13 And now abide
faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love."
