To Love...

"Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." 1 Cor. 13:6 & 7

I have been learning and thinking a lot about love, and what it means to love. What it means to love like Abba loves, to love how he intended us to love. To love means to look at someone in their humanity. To look at the imperfections, and the flaws, and the sin and not judge or hate, but look and see the pain that hides behind the scars. To see that pain and think, "I know what it feels like to be ashamed, to be angry, to be beat down and broken. To lie there bleeding begging for someone to notice. Begging for someone to notice. Begging for someone to understand. See f we stopped being so selfish and stopped thinking so much about how we've been wronged, we'd realize that all we ant is someone to understand us, and more than likely...

We'd realize that there's someone right there, right next to us, who knows what we're going through. Who stands with us through it all, even when we are hurtful and hateful and seem UNLOVABLE. They hold us and pray for us, intercede on our behalf, and see us not only for who we are right now, but also for what we are meant to be. That, that is what LOVE is. Not this pesky thing where it's conditional and based on what you can get from a relationship. It's not about control or pride or trying to change someone.

We have perverted love. We have destroyed it and crushed it and caused it to be something to be despised. Caused others to be pessimistic about it, and hearts to be broken over and over. We've caused love to be used as an excuse to throw judgments at people, to be replaced by lust, and to become a thing of faerie tales. And people deny "true love" exists, because when things get tough, we harden or hearts and say "I never loved you." or "I've fallen out of love." Because loving someone hurts.

I wish others would see that pain isn't always bad. That it's okay to feel, to love. We've just lost how to love. That's it! We've lost how to love. And we've lost how to love others well. We've lost the meaning of love. Or perhaps it's that God is Love, and God is incomprehensible, and thus "true love" is incomprehensible to us as humans.

That is what God is teaching me, to Love better, to Love well. To not let hate or anger or hurt get in the way of the Love that God wants me to share with the world. The Love that He shared with me first.