I've learned that love in this world isn't what we expect it to be. I've learned that I love too deeply to be considered "normal." At least not normal today. So many incidents in our lives today make us either afraid to love, unable to love, unwilling to love, or overly expectant of what love is supposed to feel like.
The truth is, though, love isn't what we are told it is in the movies. I never expected it to be, but so many of us look for that, and we end up completely dissatisfied with what we have in our lives.
My problem, though, isn't a fear of love, it isn't an inability to love... My problem is that I can't do anything other than love. It's something that God placed in me, and for what reason, I don't know yet. The biggest problem with this, however, is that it makes me too trusting, too open, and too expectant of others to be the same. Love isn't complicated to me, it isn't messy or hard. It is simply a choice I make. I choose, daily, to love everyone I am blessed with coming in contact with.
What I know, however, is that love isn't perfect because human beings aren't perfect. We are all indescribably flawed, and incredibly harsh towards ourselves inwardly. We judge areas of ourselves that we don't need to judge, and we turn ourselves into a villain that we are not. What we need to do is turn those areas of ourselves over to Christ entirely, and become in-tune with the beauty of who God has made us to be.
I didn't learn this through some big revelation or some trial I have faced. I actually learned this through the love of my dog; my angel in disguise.
You see, we may be flawed, and we may be incapable of loving completely unconditionally, but animals aren't. There is no one in this world that will ever love me that way kenobi loves me.
I feel that God placed little children and animals on this earth in order to teach us what real love looks like; real love is unselfish and and unjudgmental. We can have a bad day, come home and snap at a child for nothing of their doing, and they will still love us--they will try to cheer us to and make us laugh. There is no judgement or anger in them... They simply want to love us.
Just as you can leave an animal for weeks at a time, abandon it with your family to take care of it, knowing it has an unhealthy attachment to you and isn't them same when you're gone--but when you come home, what do he do? When I come home, what does kenobi do? He runs into my arms and glues himself to me all day and night. He simply wants to tell me that he loves me and he missed me.
As we get older, and we experience life, our ability to hold this kind of selfless and irrevocable love for others is difficult. We become changed by the world, and untrusting. But if God created us in His image, and He is Love, should we not be willing to selflessly love?
God tells us "unless you become my little children, you will not enter then Kingdom of Heaven."
So this is how I choose to love. Unconditionally, and with a childlike faith in others. Yes, this will lead to a lot of heartache and disappointment, but I know that my God is greater, and I know that He sees that the motives behind my love for everyone in my life is to simply love them; my intention is to simply let at least the people I come into contact with know that they, too, are worthy of love and deserve it.
So here's to trying to live with the heart of a child, to ignoring the social norms of the world and not letting the wickedness in it make me grow cold, and here's to allowing God to guide me, always, even when I have no idea to where that may be.
Jesus, I trust in You.
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