Love. Can’t live with it. Can’t live without it. Love. The source of the lowest lows and the highest highs. Love. A feeling of being seen, known and valued. Love. A feeling of heartbreak and despair when the well runs dry. Love. That warm, comforting feeling of friendship. That exciting, passionate feeling of a new romance. The familiarity and dependability of family.
Love can be described in so many ways. Love can be different things to different people. Love can be elusive to some and all-encompassing to others. Love can leave us speechless. Or it can inspire the words to rush right out of us in songs and poems. For some, love gets a bad rap. They close the door on love and throw away the key. Others chase it endlessly, searching for something they never quite find.
But there is a standard for love- whether it be romantic or platonic. The directions are clear:
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends (1 Corinthians 13:4–8a).
There is a standard for love- Jesus walked it out daily during his time here on Earth.
And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2).
Why is it so difficult for us to “walk in love” as Christ did? Why is it so difficult for us to be a “fragrant offering” to one another?
Because human love gets so easily distorted. Human love takes a shape all its own, and if we are not careful, it grows farther and farther from the example set by Jesus. It looks less and less like the reflection of God and more and more like the reflection of man. People become controlling and call it love. People become manipulative and call it love. People berate and abuse others and call it love. People enmesh themselves with others and call it love. People set unrealistic standards for others to meet and call it love. People instill fear and call it love. People throw around conditions and ultimatums and call it love.
No wonder it is so hard to find our way to the standard set by Jesus. The standard so clearly spelled out for us in the Bible. Our vision of love can be clouded by past experiences- past abuse, pain and trauma. Our vision of love can be clouded by misrepresentations of its expression. Things we have seen and witnessed under the guise of love but that have really just been love distorted.
I, myself, have been trying to sift through the years of debris, broken promises and false representations of love. I have been trying to find my way back to a clearer vision of love, a more pure form of it. To see love as it was meant to be, without the many distortions I have experienced in my life. It might take me a whole lifetime to get there but here is my roadmap back to love:
Love is patient and kind– that means being in control of myself and my emotions so that I can extend grace and compassion to those around me.
Love does not envy or boast– I am not in competition with those I love. I do not have to try to prove that I am “better” in any way. I can celebrate others because their success does not threaten my own.
Love is not arrogant or rude– that means being in control of my tongue and my attitude. I do not need to make cutting remarks or put others down. Words hurt and love should not.
Love does not insist on its own way– that means I don’t try to control or manipulate others. I can communicate my needs but also learn to compromise and make sacrifices for the greater good of the relationship.
Love is not irritable or resentful– if I am feeling this way, it probably means that I am bottling things up inside. I have to be honest about my feelings. I have to know what my boundaries are and speak up when someone has crossed them. I need to be able to forgive and then move forward, letting go of the hurt from the past.
Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth– that means that love is not permissive. Love does not look the other way when someone does me wrong. I have to speak truth, in love. I have to call people out when they are behaving badly. And sometimes that means having difficult conversations in order to hold people accountable.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things– one caveat here: this does not mean putting up with abuse or staying in relationships that are harmful to a person’s emotional, mental, physical or spiritual health. This applies when people are striving to walk out the ideal version of love. When all parties are doing the work and offering a fragrant aroma of love to each other. Then they can endure together and place their belief and hope in the love they share.
Love never ends– this one is hard. Even though love never ends, sometimes relationships do. Maybe the only eternal love I will ever receive is God’s love. That is okay. That is enough. Because it is His love that allows me to keep loving, even as relationships end, or change, or evolve over the years.
Love. It can be hard to define. Sometimes we have to learn what love is not, before we can understand what it is. Sometimes we have to identify the distorted love, before we can straighten it out and see the true standard of love more clearly. And when we see it, we can pick up the roadmap God gave us, so that we can learn to love like Him and reflect a more pure, selfless love to those who need it.