Love: The Never-ending Lesson

Love takes on many forms and looks many ways to different people. Love can be dangerous, it can feel safe. It can feel exhilarating and sometimes it can feel deflating. Love can mean freedom to one and control to another. Love to Christians is portrayed ultimately by the sacrifice that Jesus made. Love to Peter looked like cutting off an ear in defense of someone he loved. Sometimes it looks like forsaking one’s own desire for the sake of others. For some religions, it looks like blowing yourself up. Love sometimes means moving on. Sometimes it means staying and improving what you have.

We read books, we read articles, and we take quizzes trying to figure out what it looks like. What it is supposed to feel like and how to recognize when it is true. It is hard to grasp what it is supposed to look like and sometimes confusing when it doesn’t materialize right before your very eyes in the expected form. (I know this; it took me a couple of times…) What we interpret as the end result doesn’t always define how it looks to someone else. We can be so passionate about one thing that we are blinded to others. It is easier to see what we need instead of what the other person wants.

I’ve seen love in many different ways. I have shown it in several ways. Sometimes I have even used it the wrong way. Being a daughter, a wife, a mother, a friend, I find myself evaluating critically to see how I am showing my love or if I am receiving love. In the rough patches, I forget to love myself and am grateful for the reminders of the people who do. 

Loving is tough. We take lots of lumps and bumps learning how to love.  My husband, the more laid back one, always reminds me that patience is key. The other thing he says, although, usually more in a computer setting, is “If it was easy everyone would do it.” 

We grew up in a family where you knew what was expected of you. Love was showed (towards me and usually by me) by both task and by words. It wasn’t always portrayed by doing what felt good to you, but by compromising with others. It meant lying down hurt and anger to work towards a solution that benefited both parties. There wasn’t another option; they weren’t disposable, because that was your family. Loving my family is easy. Well, easier than I have found it is to love other people. 

It’s not easy to love other people. My mom and dad taught me growing up, that I had to love them too and treat them with the same standards that we treated our family. It’s easy to treat our friends that way because we chose them. I am talking about the OTHER people: the co-worker that annoys you, the neighbors you don’t agree with, that kid who keeps picking on your child or the people you go to church with. Sometimes the lines between family, friendship and other people cross and you get the benefit of something really great. But the circumstantial people, who exist in the same place but you didn’t chose them, which you interact with on a regular basis, can make it hard. 

They have different ideas of what love is, how it operates, what its value is, what that value looks like. ‘Other people’ are sometimes an optional part of most people’s lives.  If you don’t like them, see eye to eye with them or they just lose their appeal, you can just begin to lose touch and slowly fade them out of your life. What they think might have qualified them for love, wasn’t enough for the other person to say they deserve it.  Sometimes they just don’t fit into your life anymore. What some people call love, others call tolerance.  There’s always the rare few that even give you the finger while they are leaving. 

Love is a choice. After being hurt through some of those experiences, it is hard to want to keep doing it.  I might not always do it right. I even mess it up sometimes. I’m still trying, even with my own family. It means less writing and more paying attention to being a mom and a wife because it’s not worth being irritated trying to do something I love, especially when I am home so I can be a mom and a wife. It means having patience while trying to teach my children a life lesson, slowing down to do it right so we don't have to do it over and over again. Sometimes it means learning to just shut my mouth when I am hurt and frustrated instead of letting my words hurt the ones around me.  Other times it means letting my walls down and letting other people in, so they can understand and show me their love.

My parents (they kinda sound like they know a thing or two about it) say it means going forward, not looking back and choosing to see the good instead of the bad as difficult as it may seem. One thing I have learned over the years is that every day is a new day, full of potential to show love again. On the 999,999,999^th day, I might get it right.  But that is not a guarantee. Cause my understanding of love changes through every experience.  It’s about being willing to try until we get it. 

Whatever it looks like, whatever it feels like, whomever you share it with, I hope you had a good Valentine’s Day. If it didn’t go quite right, tomorrow is another day. If there wasn’t someone by your side, there is still the potential that there will eventually be someone great to share it with.