On the Trail to Love

 Love one another 

John 13:34

In my quest to love better, I have found myself among the lesser traveled, more challenging trails of my own heart. I am both checking myself and checking my relationships to see exactly what I and they are doing in terms of loving. It's easy to love people who love you back, isn't it? It's simple to give out blind trust to those who are trustworthy. You don't even give a second thought to the ones who always seem to respond when you reach out. They are just "easy to love", aren't they? They do all the "right" things. Even if a mistake is made between you, because there is security in the way you feel about each other and treat each other, it's really not a big deal to just talk it over and move on.  I love and relax in those kinds of relationships and I want to be that person to those special people for whom I care.  

They seem to just love you when you need to be loved, give you praise or honor when you need to be lifted up, respond in truth when you need a response, commit to you in whatever way you have asked them, show up when you ask them to show up, offer help when you need them and often before you need them, and a whole host of other "loving" behaviors that just tell you, "I don't need to wonder. This person just loves and accepts me." My mom recently told me that my sister said she adores me. That just warmed my heart. To be adored by anyone is a blessing, and I adore her as well. I love my family and my close friends. 

How many of those people do you have in your life? Are you a person like that to someone else? Is there anyone in your life who just gives you unconditional acceptance? Someone who you just don't have to jump through hoops for? Someone who just looks at you just the way you are and says, "you know, you are just amazing and I can't imagine my life without you in it." I have a limited amount of those people and I have people I look at that way, thankfully. But I know I can do better and I know I have "danglers" in my life where there are some uncertainties about my place there or what they are doing here. Do you have anyone dangling around that you are not sure of? 

In having conversations with others, I sometimes hear, "This person just rubs me the wrong way every time I talk to him or her. I just always seem to get my feelings hurt" or "I try to communicate with him or her, but he or she shuts down and won't respond so we never get anything resolved. I don't know where I stand. I keep bringing things up so I become like a nag to this person and I'm not like that with anybody else. It's frustrating!" Why is it in certain relationships, we try so hard and it just seems fruitless and in others it is just so effortless? The biggest question is why are we letting it bother us so much? Can we learn to just let people do what they need to do and we can just move on until they do? Or is it not that simple? It must not be, because relationships are a big source of contention with many people. To me, the common thread is love or a big lack of it. 

Are they "hard to love" or are we having a hard time loving? I don't like the term "loving the unlovable" because I feel everyone is in some way loveable to someone and to be honest, some days I just feel unlovable myself! But just like not everyone will like us, we may not ever be able to fix a relationship to the point where love becomes natural or "easy". We have to know one thing going into any relationship with any person: we are not always "easy" either. Someone has had to "work" at loving us at some point because we gave them a run for their money too, or maybe we are right now. 

As I've pointed out before, God commanded us to Love one another. It wasn't a request because He knew we would struggle with this. Some of us would not be raised in healthy loving environments and would take those unhealthy habits into the next relationships. Some would take their rejected hearts and go and reject others, wondering why they always feel rejected. Some would take their self hate and pain and project it onto others. All of these things and more create all kinds of unhealthy situations, making it more and more difficult to love and be loved. But God knew this ahead of time, and so He encouraged us to love anyway, and especially those who need it the most.  This is why it's so important for us to just take a minute and put our "God goggles" on and look at people and try to understand them before we decide they are terrible, mean people. Most of the time they are just misguided, misdirected, angry, confused, hurt, bad communicators, or they have just never experienced compassion. You get to decide if you go around hugging porcupines hoping they soften or if you want to protect yourself from them. 

When you hear the phrase "Hurting people hurt people" I will bet that someone came immediately to mind. Maybe it was yourself. I know that I thought of a couple people, but I also remember a few things I have done, said, or thought and maybe even recently that were the cause of my own personal pain.  I failed to pray or take my pain to the Lord first and reconcile it with Him before I hurt another person with it. We all do this at some point and it can help us to understand others who also hurt themselves this way. The answer is God's way, which is to love them as they are and give them the same understanding you need when you're being a pain-in-the-porcupine. 

Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. 

Colossians 3:12

 When we are full of love and compassion for others and ourselves, we become powerful. When we are powerful, we can choose to not allow the careless words or others to get to our hearts quite so personally. We can understand that "it's not always about us" though it's okay to have feelings and deal with them in a healthy way. It is with compassion that Jesus healed the people. We can be helpful healers of people as well when we show compassion to them instead of anger or bitterness when they make mistakes or let us down. We can also help heal ourselves when we are tender toward ourselves and our own mistakes. 

Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes. Immediately they received their sight and followed him. 

Matthew 20:34 

One of the brambles in my less traveled jaunts is the fact that we throw the word "love" around so easily, but yet it's a very powerful word. To really love someone is a commitment, and I don't mean just the marital type of commitment. I have been told countless times by individuals (hint, I just called them "individuals") those words, "I love you", but did I feel loved by them? No. They were just flippant words. Love requires many things, and not all of them are sweet and rainbow-filled. I lost many "friends" who spoke words of love, but disappeared when the clouds came. Love is being secure, being at peace, being mindful of another, feeling valued and protected, feeling cared for, and the list goes on according to the type of love. If you are evaluating relationships and you find you are valuing people who don't value you, giving care and protection to those who are not caring for or protecting you, not providing you with emotional or even physical peace, I'm not sure how that can be called "love" at all. Trust God to show you who should be in your life by praying for the uncertain people in your life. 

My dear friend Norm Sawyer (sirnorm.com)has taught me many things about friendship, and the differences between friends and acquaintances. This is not good news for the danglers. I just smiled at that statement and I'm going to bet he did too. Sometimes we keep people in our lives for the wrong reasons. We think "But God says I have to love everyone" or "I've had this friend forever" or the one I've been telling myself, "at least this friend stays in touch. It's more than I can say for the others." But those aren't reasons to keep people in your life. Especially if they are a source or a reminder of pain for any reason or if every time you talk to them, they bring out a side of you that is not kind, peaceful, or secure.  We can care about people from a distance, we can forgive them and not have them in our lives, and we can trust God to bring in new people that will treat us better, and pray that God will give them new friends to help them too. But what we can't do is "fix" people, become codependent on them and call it "love", stick around only because you're hoping they'll eventually change and be the person you thought they were, or stick around because you hope they will eventually give you closure and apologies and "make it right". News flash, they probably won't do any of those things as long as you are there, making it easy for them to dangle around getting whatever it is they get from you. It's just not healthy. Get out of the brambles and get back on the trail. 

There are people in our lives who will be there for us no matter what. Those are friends. That may be just one friend and that's okay. Then there are people who will only be there once in a while and they are great people, we just won't connect on a deeper level, and that's fine too. Those are acquaintances, and we shouldn't take it personally when they don't choose us as close friends or choose others instead. Again, when we choose to love ourselves and others and show compassion to ourselves and others, we become powerful. We can then give ourselves and others the freedom to do what we and they need and want to do without conditions. We always need to trust and thank God for the people He has provided in our lives for our benefit and thank Him for the ones he removed too! Both are a blessing even if it hurts like nobody's business to lose someone you thought cared for you or you considered to be a close friend forever. 

This is why letting go is such an important part of love. I don't want to let go of my "dangler" (sorry for this term, but at this point it's working and I'm owning it), but it doesn't really love me. It is simply dangling me around, and I think God has me here for a better purpose than to just be kept hanging around. If at some point this person is open to listening to me, conversing with me on a more personal level, or including me and supporting me and caring about me on a normal level as a true friend, I would be open to that on my terms. But until then, I need to follow God's leading on forgiving this person for the part played in hurting me and forgiving myself for the part I played in returning the hurt. Sometimes we hold on too long and we need to trust that when we finally let go, God will help us move on and heal our hearts. 

 Loving does involve wanting what is best for others-even people we don't like, people who hurt us, people we see as frenemies, because when we are softened by love and compassion, we can be open to accepting the art and blessing of forgiveness. We also need to realize that sometimes we have to take a good look at ourselves and ask God to "fix" the things in us that haven't been working so well for awhile and that involves asking God to reveal some things that maybe we haven't been doing right or well with others. Love takes action and it takes truth if you really want to have relationships that matter and create powerful changes in yourself and with others. 

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. 

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Be blessed!