What is love?
Love, to me first and foremost, means that your heart is sacred. Acquiring and sustaining a love for God and wrapping yourself in His mercy is a deeply profound feeling. It encompasses you and encourages you on a daily basis to displace self-righteousness with unwavering humility.
Love is being honest with yourself at all times. Being honest with other individuals at all times…telling, listening, respecting the truth and never pretending or sacrificing your morals. Love overcomes resentment and alleviates sadness. Love embraces and looks through the eyes of others. Love means two hearts can beat together when there is a reluctance to go it alone. Love is the root of passion and taking in a daily situation, being able to embody a patience and understanding with our respective needs and desires.
Love is an understanding so complete that you feel as if you are a part of the other person, accepting the other person just the way they are without a inclination to change or to fit them into your own ideals. Love is the freedom to pursue your own desires while sharing your experiences with others. Love is reciprocal and manifests itself in the growth of one individual alongside of, and together with, the growth of another individual.
TRUE love, I feel, must also be dynamic. If your heart is broken, let it make you sensitive to the pain and strife of others. If you have love, do not neglect to be grateful. Love is the force behind all life and, above all, we are eternally blessed to carry it in our hearts.
Does everyone possess love?
I believe that everyone possesses an innate presence of love. Circumstances such as inadequate parenting, dysfunctional homes, peer pressure and too many choices in our society can hinder its growth and outpouring. Thus, I feel, it is imperative for those fortunate enough to embody love and its glory, that we should set aside every opportunity to encourage others with kinds words, gestures, compassion and most importantly, with the power of prayer. I believe that God has given us authority and that he will not work independently of us in our lives. He wants us to work through anyone who can move into this authority and rekindle this innate presence of love and personal growth.
An analogy I like to use with others is this: In the fall season, envision the hues of red, purple, orange and yellows…driving through a mountainside and soaking in the landscape with these amazing colors. It is the memory of these beautiful colors that get me through the winter. When everything is dark and grey, I think back to these fall colors and I know I will see them again. For me, this is yet another way love manifests itself. It’s the memory of these good times…the colorful, happy and love-filled times that can get you through the tough times without the presence and outpouring of love. You remember what it can be and that encourages you to move forward and continue your prayers.
Having said that, there is a surprising beauty in the winter as well. The leaves are off the trees and the season exposes what is really there. This is the way love is as well. The tough seasons expose what you are really made of…what is strong and what is weak. If you go through a season of difficulty and look at it from a perspective of growing deeper, of changing in the ways God wants you to change, or working things out and coming to new conclusions, then you can always find beauty…and love…in the season you’re in.
