Before this month, I understood love as the deep emotional connection I had for my family and my close friends. Love has always been something that I could feel in the deepest parts of my heart and soul. I have that love for a lot of people but I’ve always thought that if I didn’t have that emotional feeling of love for someone it meant I didn’t love them.
As I’ve gone through these last couple weeks I’ve been ashamed and heavy hearted because I don’t have those same feelings of love for everyone on my team, my squad, or even for the people I am here to serve.
Here is a good example: I visited an orphanage in Shell, Ecuador; the orphanage was for disabled kids. In Ecuador disabled kids are often left in the jungles to die, abandoned, or even thrown into the rivers. So an orphanage dedicated to kids with disabilities is critical and in large demand. While we were there, my team was so excited and happy to be with these kids, playing with them and showing these awesome emotions of love and joy while I was discouraged because I didn’t seem to have those same emotions. As the month went on I experienced more interactions with others that made me worry about my capacity to love others. I just didn’t seem to always have that “loving feeling”, as the song states.
During our last week in Ecuador, we took a few days as a squad to process what we had learned and experienced during our first month. I had the chance to talk with on of my Squad Mentors, Matt. We talked about what love is and what it looks like. I learned that sometimes love is an emotion and for some people who are very emotional, love looks like this all the time but for those of us who are not super emotional, love can be a choice. It is how we choose to interact with others, it is choosing to serve others even when we don’t want to, it is laying down your pride and humbling yourself in your relationships with others, it can be a lot of things but it doesn’t have to be associated with an emotion. I can be a frame of mind.
After this conversation I felt a large weight lift off my shoulders. I was so worried that if I didn’t have the emotional feeling of love that I wasn’t loving or that I couldn’t love. I’m excited that God showed me this early in the my journey because now I have 10 months to choose to love.
I challenge all of us to choose to love everyone we don’t have that “loving feeling” for. It takes a conscious effort to do this. Even though I know I need to choose to love, I still find myself saying ‘no’ to love. It is tough to do and something that I look forward to learning how to do well, whether I learn that over the next 9 months or not it is something I will choose to practice for the rest of my life.
