Keep Your Love On
By: Danny Silk
This was a book that my team leader brought on the Race for us, as a team, to read. I absolutely loved it. It not only spoke so many words about my own life but it also helped me in understanding and pushing to love others.
This book is written in 3 different components that describe a different way to really learn about love. The 3 relational components of love that are described in this book are connection, communication, and boundaries. Each component has such a powerful message.
Connections
This section of the book talks mostly about how we all long for a connection. Everyone want to be connected with others, to feel safe, loved and appreciated. Not only does it talk about powerful people who take ownership but also powerless people who struggle in life to value their life. I think the biggest part of this section was when the author talked about the 5 love languages. He not only talked about what your own love language is but also being able to notice what others love language is. It is important to know yourself so that you can know others. It is important to know how you are loved so that you can understand how others need and want to be loved. Most relationships are based on fear and love. Feeling the love but also fearful when you do not always feel the love. Sometimes if you want to cast out all the fear in a relationship, then you need to leave no room for doubt in a person’s mind and heart that you truly love them. It is important to build healthy relationships that are safe but there is also going to be relationships that are not always safe and you might not always agree. The foundation of all relationships is unconditional acceptance and unconditional love no matter what. Anxiety usually comes when there is personal differences and fear will temp us to run, but we have to keep our love on by choosing to show unconditional love to others even when we are scared.
Communication
What do you need? That is the perfect question to sum up this segment of the book. There is still the foundation that our deepest need which is to love and to be loved, but this time, it is all about voicing these desires. First you have to learn how to value and understand yourself and what is going on with your own life and feelings. Because if you cannot figure yourself out you cannot move on to the second part of life which is figuring out others. Only those who value and understand themselves can truly value and understand others. Only those who can communicate honestly with themselves can communicate honestly with others. You simply can’t build a strong bond of trust without being able to communicate and meet one another’s needs. We have to be able to speak up for what are wants and needs are but also notice what others need and want. We have to choose to keep our love on, nuke fear, believe the best about people, and trust them to care. If they don’t care, forgive them. Move toward those you love even when it hurts.
Boundaries
The best part about this section is that the author used an analogy. Analogies and real-life stories are so helpful for me to understand. So before I explain the analogy, the question is, “Are you tending your garden?” So the way the author described this section is if you are not caring for yourself (aka your garden), then there will be no growth (no fruit produced). Basically, you have to care for yourself before you can care for someone else. You have to care for your garden before you can care for someone else’s garden. You will not reap a harvest of fruit until you care for yourself first. Then once you have cared for yourself and the harvest is full in your own garden, then you will be ready to go and share with others the fruit you have. We have to set boundaries on our life so that we do not get stretched too far. Because when we get stretched too far, not only do we suffer but the people around us also suffer. Powerlessness, irresponsibility, and lack of boundaries are all rooted in failing to value your life as you should. So we have to keep our love on for our self so that we can then love others.
This book has not only given me words of encouragement on how to love myself but it has also given me great examples for loving God more and loving others more. If we have an absolute fearless heart of love that peruses to connect with broken sinners, others will see that we are different. We have to keep out love on for others to see an know.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the summary I have written about this amazing book.
Aleesa
