Love...sometimes I think I forget what love is supposed to be. I find myself so caught up in my own thoughts and needs that I forget that love isn't just something that happens to me. It isn't just this feeling that is floating out there in space. Love is supposed to be who I am. Love is supposed to be what I live for. It is because of love that I am here, isn't it? It is because of love that I have so many chances.
Yet I find myself in this pattern of not relying on love. I find myself wanting to earn love, or wanting others to earn my love. I find myself wondering if I love enough.
This past weekend I found myself in tears because of a friend's pain. I found myself with the biggest heartache that I have had for another person, in a really long time, so much so that it brought me to tears, the giant sobbing kind of tears. In that moment it struck me what love truly is. In that moment I understood that what love is....it's feeling what another person is going through so deeply that you feel it inside of your core. Then I thought...that's it. That is what this life is about. When we look at others, when we listen to them, we love them so much that we truly allow ourselves to feel what they are going through. We allow ourselves to be put into the position that they are in. We allow ourselves to love to our core.
Isn't that what Jesus did? He felt the pain to His very core that each of us would go through. Every single time we shed a tear, He feels it....just as much as we do. That is the depth of love, that is the truth of love. That is living love.
I'm not Jesus, I can't attain His perfection...but I am able to love through His grace and mercy. I am able to tune in to the love that He has for me, and carry that on in my interactions.
I find myself stopping in moments throughout my day and asking myself if I am truly loving to my core. Am I connecting with others so much so that I feel their pain and hurt? Or am I just listening to them, telling them I will pray for them, and then moving forward? I don't want to be complacent when it comes to love. I don't want it to be just another emotion that I have. I want it to seriously run my life. I want love to be what comes out of me in my most vulnerable moments, when all I want to do is run the other direction. I want to love others so much that they can't possible do anything else but understand God's love, and sacrifice more after they are in contact with me.
Love isn't just a feeling that comes and goes like butterflies in my stomach. It isn't just this crazy emotion that I get when I think a guy is into me. Love is so much deeper than that. Love has a depth that can only be peeled back when it is authentically given to the core. I didn't design love, there's nothing anyone should be able to do to take away my love. Because love shouldn't come from me, and it shouldn't be filled out of my weaknesses. Love, it has to be bigger than that. Love....has to be the very depth of who I am. Love has to be the force that drives me to my knees, and powers me to understand how to connect in the most meaningful of ways.
That's the kind of life worth living, that's the kind of love worth dying for.
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