God has given me a beautiful gift. He’s given me the gift to love.
But it’s also a curse.
How is love a curse? That makes no sense!
I love people easily. I love people with my whole heart. I love people with everything inside of me. I love people forever. I love people more than I can express.
Sounds like the dream, huh? I must have it SOO rough loving people so much.
Hang with me on this one.
I love people, which is wonderful. That gift is straight from God, because he is love.
The hard part about loving people, here’s where the curse come in, is when they don’t love back. When they turn their back on me. When they stab me in the back. When the leave me behind. This hurts deeply. This hurts more than I could express. This is a reoccurring theme in my life of me loving and getting pushed to the side.
I haven’t struggled with drugs or alcohol or a bad home life or any of the typical things that people struggle with. This hurt in my life isn’t visible from the surface. This hurt is hidden deep in my heart.
So what do I do every time I’ve loved and get thrown to the side? I tell myself, Okay, I need to stop loving. I need to just chill out for a while. Obviously these people don’t love me back, so I just need to stop loving them. This has affected my life very negatively, obviously. When others have turned on me, I’ve decided to not love them anymore. When people have hurt me, I have decided to stop loving. This method was supposed to help me from getting hurt, but instead it’s given me stress. It’s taken friends from me. It takes away happiness. It hurts just as much, just in different ways.
I was crying in my bed earlier asking God to just tell me what to do. What am I doing wrong? I love people and I get hurt. I stop loving and it hurts just as much. Just please tell me what I need to do to stop hurting so much!
Silence.
I’ll wait….
And then it came to me. I don’t know if it was God saying it or if he finally helped me put the pieces together. But I get it now.
I’m loving other people, which is great.
But I’m not loving God.
I pursue relationships with other people.
But I’m not pursuing a relationship with God.
I spend countless hours wondering how people think about me. Wondering if they will return the love for me that I’ve given them. Trying to earn their love.
I hardly give any attention to God or my relationship with him.
That’s my problem.
I need to learn how to love God again. I need to feel his love for me again. I need to be filled up before I can start pouring out. And I need to start today.
I’ve found that I spend a lot of time on Facebook and Twitter trying to make a name for myself. I try to get people to like me. I try to earn my love and I spend quite a bit of time trying to make people love me. This is the first thing that has to go, at least for a while.
I need to clear my head and my life from the distractions it has to offer me.
I need to give up my facebook and twitter time to really focus on God and fall back in love with him, and to feel his love for me again.
I’m going to give it at least a month, maybe longer than that. Consider it me fasting from Facebook and Twitter.
And during this time I ask that you pray for my relationship with God to flourish and grow. I ask for healing from past hurts. I ask for God to forgive my neglecting him. I ask for him to give me the strength to forgive those who have hurt me.
And I pray I can learn how to love God again.
