"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrong and possibly broken…The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the dangers of love is Hell" – CS Lewis
Love.
Out of all the four letter words in the world, it’s probably the one I’ve said the least in my life.
Shocked?
You shouldn’t be.
Love has scared the hell out of me for the better part of twenty five years.
As much as love is a wonderful bliss, it also represents a promise of pain. It carries with it this massive risk of loss and an almost unbearable threat: to risk our wants, desires and priorities for the sake of someone else.
Gulp.
Love is so hard for me because it requires me to exude total selflessness. I usually desire to do the opposite. I can justify it by saying that’s just human nature, right?
Think about it…at the core, love doesn’t mean you get warm and fuzzy feelings inside. It’s not a big yellow bird passing out hugs left and right while performing sing-along songs with his friends. Love…true love…it goes against our nature. And that’s what makes it scary. That’s what makes it enough to cause the selfishness to creep back in the window of our souls and dominate our actions.
For the better part of nine months on this journey, I’ve wanted loving others to come naturally. It rarely has and it rarely does. Love in its’ most genuine form is never easy. Which makes it that much more simple to write people off.
Trust me, I know.
I’ve done it to God. I’ve done it to teammates. I’ve done it to contacts.
I’ve struggled with the person who has boundary issues and the one who talks like they get paid by the word count.
I’ve blown off the guy who is socially awkward and the girl who pushes all the wrong buttons.
Sure, I tell myself I love them. But it’s not like I’m running to be seen in public with them either. Somewhere in my head, I’ve made it seem okay to say that I don’t like them because they just aren’t likeable in the first place.
If I would be honest, I’d realize I’m not very likeable either.
But that didn’t stop God from reaching out towards me some two thousand years ago in the most selfless action in history.
If the God of the universe could do that for someone like me, why can’t I do it for others?
Love doesn’t need to be about the person you’re reaching out to, it needs to be about you.
God shows us love because that’s the essence of who he is.
Love.
And because of that, I shouldn’t love others out of guilt of feeing hot and cold towards them, but because God loves me.
(Thanks for capturing this moment Dan the man)
During a conversation with one of my squad leaders recently, I determined I'm pretty hot and cold when it comes to love. Not exactly the easiest pill to swallow.
The more I prayed through the things that were spoken over me, all I could see was the word love flashing like a street sign on the Vegas strip. And I knew I had to keep running to it.
So I did.
And now I see I'm not just called to love. I'm called to love those whom no one else loves. I'm called to love unlikable and unlovely people in this world. Afterall, unlovely people are unlovely for a reason. It's not because they are unlovable, but because they are unloved.
But they won't be anymore…
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I love you all.
