Love transforms the spirit.

Saturday morning, I got up and a pesky little thought kept running through my mind: if the result of your love isn’t unity and community then it’s broken. I must admit that I don’t love everybody, and I don’t love all the time. In fact, I often find myself wanting to smack some of you but most importantly, some of the people I do love… unity and community is not the always outcome.

I thought about the different reasons for the different outcomes within my relationships. From my perspective, some are my fault, some are their fault and others the fault of circumstance. For instance, I used to love my ex-husband. I loved him even after our divorce. I loved him even after he remarried. I mean this is the father of my kids we are talking about it, after all, but the year our son graduated from high school, our daughter got married. Their father decided not to attend our son’s graduation dinner party and not pay for any portion of our daughter’s wedding. When I tried to appeal to him because both of his children were hurting, I was told to butt out as both of our children were now adults and he did not need my help communicating with either one of them. He has never been a man able to maintain putting our children’s needs above his own and I will admit that after he bullied our daughter because she would not allow him the honor of walking her down the aisle though he was contributing nothing to the wedding, I lost respect and lost love.

I have two sisters and I am sure they would both agree that I do not love them all the time. In fact, I have been mostly estranged from one of them for quite some time now.  We were closest when we were younger but as we grew into adulthood, something broke. Not sure how the fracture began but it grew into a fissure and then a hard break. I believe she would tell you that I do not love her which is not the case, I do very much. I know at this point, only God can provide the healing we need. The other has desired a closer relationship, but we have been unable to realize that goal. We are very different and yet come from a shared upbringing. We look very much alike, often being mistaken for twins but we don’t share much common ground. I also love her very much, but to like her, I had to learn to appreciate our differences, understanding God made her purposely. I have not always loved them like I should, when I should. We tend to overuse our relationships with family, believing them to be our relationships most capable of standing the test of time and taking the abuse… the whole blood is thicker than water mentality.

I have at times left a trail of tears in the wake of my love.

So how does my broken love get mended and molded into something that is bringing unity and creating community? Brings us straight back to asking the question what is love? I John 4 verses 8 and 16 tell us God is love and as discussed before the more in-depth description of how Love / God acts in in I Corinthians 13:4-8a: Love is large and incredibly patient. Love is gentle and consistently kind to all. It refuses to be jealous when blessing comes to someone else. Love does not brag about one’s achievements nor inflate its own importance. 5 Love does not traffic in shame and disrespect, nor selfishly seek its own honor. Love is not easily irritated or quick to take offense. 6 Love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong. 7 Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up. 8 Love never stops loving.

Verse 8 concludes with: Love remains long after words of knowledge are forgotten…which means to me at the end of everything, there is love. It was here before us and it will be here after you and I are gone. It is greater than us. It is bigger than us. Perfect love is beyond what we are in and of ourselves are capable of. It is something that needs to be practiced because it does not often come naturally.

In Aramaic, the first verse: love is patient can be translated into love transforms the spirit. What else on earth can transform us like love does? What we first must come to truly understand is that we are not capable of the kind of love that Christ is calling us to, the type that brings unity and builds community, without Him. The more I try to love the way that He loves, the better my love gets because it’s no longer just my love but rather mine transformed by His.

It allows me to love someone who has hurt me without requiring apology. It allows me to love someone who isn’t mature and regularly making mistakes. It allows me to find the best in every person. It helps me find hope in every situation. Nothing and no one are lost to His love. Not me. Not you. Not anyone. Unless of course, you are choosing to hide yourself from Him like Adam and Eve in the garden. Hiding is only an illusion though because He saw them, and He sees you. He is the Shepherd that leaves the ninety-nine for the one (Matthew 18:12). We can read the words and understand them but to comprehend we must first be loved (I John 4:19).

I know a man. He is a good man. He tries to be kind and helpful to everyone around him. His life has not been easy: given away as a baby, never adopted, raised in group homes. What he has endured would break many and yet he survived. He is good, but he doesn’t know how to accept love. He doesn’t know how to give love. He equates it only with a sexual, romantic type relationship. God chases him. Praying for him one evening, God showed me this man walking in the dark, then God shined His light down on this man so that he could see but the man stood, still in the darkness, refusing to open his eyes. He said, “I don’t know where to You want me to go?” God replied, you need only open your eyes as your path is illuminated” but he stood there, eyes shut, hands out trying to feel his way what was now only a perceived darkness.  I shared this with him. He believes he is looking for a woman when in fact, he is looking for the healing love that ONLY God can provide. It hurts me to watch him not allow himself to be truly loved but aren’t we all just a bit like that: eyes closed, afraid of opening them to the light of His love? We are more afraid of who He might ask us to love in return for the light than we are the darkness.

I love some well. Some better than others. When I analyze those relationships I am better at, it doesn’t simply come down to liking someone or understanding them but rather it is those that began from a place He created within me where my own judgments and opinions were not allowed to develop before His love for them was rooted in me. My prayer is that eventually my older relationships that are broken will eventually be renewed as I learn to more deliberate in how I love.

I told a friend who had asked me: how do I love without getting hurt all time; that I have found the key is to love through Him. I can love anyone He asked me to love because the love I am exuding is His and immeasurable. It is not so touchy and doesn’t mind being vulnerable. In fact, it sees vulnerability as strength. I am more particular with my own love; the love that is mine to give away. That love takes time to develop because it relies on trust and honesty and loyalty…plus a myriad of other things important to me for maintain a loving relationship but HIS LOVE is not reliant on ANYTHING BUT HIM. His love instantaneous, never fails and is everlasting, so I can give it away like candy…and so can you!

My love is broken. I drink tequila. I have tattoos.  I still use cuss words. I need to lose a few. My office is a messy. I want to smack the bumpers of people driving slower than me in the left-hand lane. I am in NO way perfect but grace brings me thankfully into a beautiful place where His perfect love can flow through me and be what He needs me to be for whomever is in need of His love regardless of color, gender, sexual preference, hairstyle, body-type, whether they drive on two wheels or four, etc. because LOVE TRANSFORMS THE SPIRIT and the first spirit it transforms in me.