Choosing love.
I was reading a post on Facebook earlier about a woman questioning whether her partner was the right person for her. The narrator of the article continued to talk about what relationships look like and how he was able to know that the man sitting next to the woman was her current partner. He continued to talk about how love starts… or at least what his perception is on how love starts. He went on about the feelings, about the honeymoon phase, about all of the fluff as I like to call it…
And then I stopped reading.
The thought came to my mind.. “choose love”. And my brain train just ran on full speed from there. How many times do we see love as a feeling and not as an action? I mean, it’s in everyday in our culture. It’s described as the sweep you off your feet, feel good butterflies in your stomach on the screens that we watch with melted eyes and hearts.
But is that really love? Is that really the love that’s out there for us? Is that REALLY what God had in mind when He sent Jesus to teach us about LOVING Him and LOVING one another? Because I’m gonna be honest, if that’s the type of love I’m supposed to feel for God all of the time, then I am in some trouble. If that’s the type of love we use to describe the way our Heavenly Father speaks about us, then what happens when the butterflies fade? Because sometimes I am downright ANGRY with God.. I am UPSET with Him.. and sometimes I can’t even find Him because I’m so blind by what I THOUGHT love was supposed to look like.
But He still CHOOSES me. He never leaves me. And I think THAT’S what love is supposed to look like. That’s the descriptor we are supposed to use when we talk about what LOVE is. LOVE does not equal romance, it’s actually quite the opposite. God chooses to LOVE us every day, and He does NOT do that every day with romantic gestures. He does that by sending the Holy Spirit to shut us up when we are about to say something hurtful. He does that by walking next to us when we are in pain, and getting down on the floor with us when it hurts so bad we can’t walk in the pain anymore. He does that by setting boundaries on topics our culture loves to hate talking about.. like sex… or gossip. His love speaks volumes His love says things like:
“I know you’re angry, and I hear your anger, but I’m not going to let your anger hurt YOU”
“I know you’re sad, and I am here to sit in your sadness, but I’m not going to allow your sadness to identify YOU”
“I know you made a mistake, I make mistakes too, but that mistake does not have the right to put a label on your life”
What does it look like to love the person next to you? What does it look like to love the person across the world? What does it look like to love a person you haven’t met yet… because yes.. it’s possible.
From my eyes it looks like a choice. It looks like ownership. It looks like knowing where I stand in my relationship with God so I can choose to become more like Him. It looks like becoming more like Him and taking on His fatherly AND motherly characteristics so I can love the person next to me, or the one across the world, or the one I don’t know yet. It looks like humility. It looks like knowing when to say yes and when to say no. It looks like understanding that I am going to mess it up. But that when I mess it up, I HAVE to be willing to love myself and those around me well and speak words of love. And it looks like knowing that words of love are rooted in my belief that God loves me and loves you so much that He sent His son.. the human flesh version of Himself to be a carpenter and love people the way they had never seen it before.
I think we all need a little more love. A little more of the real stuff. A little more of the truth. And less of what culture, society, and the song on the radio tells us about what love looks like. And that starts with deconstructing what we think love is, so the master carpenter of the world can show us what the real love is.
Love – Nico
