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| Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul. ~Saint Augustine A person comes to love not by finding the perfect person but in loving the imperfect person perfectly. I have blogged about love before but this blog is different. It’s not just about finding love it’s about discovering the love inside of ourselves and not looking to another human being to satisfy that need. It’s about finding the love of God to begin with…Agape (unconditional) love...and Eros (passionate) love... Phileo (friendship) love... and Storge (affection) love. Let’s go to the beginning... As children our greatest teachers are our parents. We learn what we live. If our parents have a blessed marriage and work through the hard times together, then we learn to do that also. If they are combative and working at cross purposes, we learn that as well. Our parents also teach us about our self worth and how to love others, if our parents are patience and kind, then we will learn those things. If they are always yelling and making us feel inadequate then we will pass that along as well. We are all a product of our environment to a certain extent. Our parents lay the foundation of how we love. We may overcome those obstacles and learn to love differently or not. We need to understand how our childhood affects the choice we make in love. I know for me I chose someone a lot like my father. First I want everyone to understand that I loved my father dearly and that I do not seek to dishonor him in death. I will just state the truth simply and sincerely. He was one of the hardest working men I have ever known. He was loyal and honest. He was committed to his family and he loved us to the best of his ability. My father was a flawed human just like all of us are. His flaws were his temper and violent nature. He was not a very affection man. He loved all his children but he never showed it physically. Hugs and kisses were foreign to him. I grew up accepting that love was; someone making sure your physical needs were taken care of (at least from the male standpoint), also that violence against women was acceptable. My mother on the other hand was quite the opposite she gave everything she was capable of to her children. My mother once told me that we were the only thing in her life that just belonged to her and that she could love us with all her heart. She said that when we were little we would just fill her heart up with innocent love with just a hug or kiss. I find that true in my own life when I need a love “fix” now I just go get those sweet grandsons of mine and my heart will just burst with love after some time spent with them. I get enough hugs and kisses from them (sometimes sticky). One I love you from those little guys will have my heart melting. I have learned diverse things about love from two totally different people. I would say that made me a little conflicted about what “real” love is. I grew up not really giving any thought to what kind of man I might marry or indeed how would we even work together to make a marriage work. I never thought about what I needed from him to feel loved and cherished or what I could give to him to make him feel that way. There is a book called the 5 love languages by Gary Chapman. I did not run across this book until recently and found it very interesting. Our five love languages: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. I have discovered mine are Quality Time and Physical Touch. The reason I call attention to this book is because I think it’s important to know these things. As a child my mother always displayed her love for me as well as telling me. I understand now why those things are important to me. It’s what I grew up with and how I knew I was loved by her. When I got married I never got those things from my husband and felt unloved and unwanted. My grandchildren now fill that void in my life; physical touch and words of affirmation. That satisfies the temporal part of my life but what about the spiritual? To find deeper meaning we must look to God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (NIV) ~1 John 4:8 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. (NIV) ~1 John 3:16 God is love, how simple is that? He loved us enough to give his only son for our salvation. That type of love eludes me; could I die for my children? Yes, without a doubt. I think most parents would say yes to that. That is love; the willingness to give your life for that person but to give my children’s life for anyone is beyond my scope of reasoning. All of us want to love like Jesus. We want to be generous, forgiving, and compassionate enough to love people unconditionally. But no matter how hard we try, somehow we fall short. Our humanness gets in the way. God loves us, we are his children. Like all parents he teaches us he gives us instruction on how to love each other and ourselves. Learning to love ourselves like God loves us is one of the hardest things for me. I understand loving my children, parents and spouse but self love was elusive to me. Why I thought I deserved less from myself and other people was why I decided to write this. I am a child of God and even if no one ever loves me again in this life I’m OK with that because I have His love. He loves me and that really is enough. We are never alone as long as we allow our Heavenly Father into our life. That is once again agape (unconditional) love. What about Eros (passionate) love? I know my ex husband loved me that way. He used to tell me that no woman on this earth did to him what I did. We had a turbulent love life but it was passionate. I discovered you need more than just passion to sustain a relationship. You need friendship, honesty, respect, and commitment. I don’t think anyone wants to lead a solitary life. I’m a passionate person, I want a husband and home of my own again. I want like everyone else to have that extraordinary bond with another human being. I want to love like Jesus; unconditional, to give my heart totally to someone who will cherish my love and protect my heart. I want that man to feel the same way about me. I want to look at them and declare from the depths of my soul that you are the man I adore even with all your faults. How can anyone truly love another without accepting their faults? The bible states: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and 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 ... (NIV) ~ 1 Corinthians 13:4–8 What would it feel like to have that kind of love? How do we achieve that kind of love? How do we break the patterns of our past to achieve that kind of love? I will confess I’m afraid; afraid of disappointing someone and not being good enough. I hate that I feel this way even after all this time. I understand the why’s and certainly will do my best but I’m human and will fail. I just do not want someone ever again to make me feel that I have to be perfect in order to be loved. Will someone be able to love me enough to help me get past the feelings of inadequacy that I have? Only God knows the answer to that and with His help, he will send the perfect; imperfect person for me and I will love them perfectly. What about Phileo (friendship)? This is where I have been deeply blessed. God has given me so many amazing people in my life to call my friends. I’m truly humbled by his generous gift. These people are honest, caring, and truly love me just the way I am faults included. God has enriched my lives with these people. There are truly many times that I ask myself what have I ever done to deserve to call these people my friends? I care about my friends at least in part because of the good qualities of their characters that I discovered them to have. I find joy in their successes, frustration and disappointment in their failures. They are an important part of my life; we have mutual acknowledgment of love for each other. Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.~Anais Nin What about Storge (Affection)? I think to sum everything up here would be all love of any kind should be affection love. This should enhance the love we all feel for each other. Love for our children, love for our friends and love for our mate. Sometimes ever for a person in need… I think Mother Teresa says it best… This is what real love is all about. Love for the human race… Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.~ Mother Teresa |
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