Love in two perspectives, Two halves of Kris

Often I am ruled by my emotions.  Completely and utterly.  My heart provides me immense joy and passion and it provides me utter despair and pain.  The gift of my intelligence and the spark of my personality are often the destructive forces to my sanity.
Commitment is a word used with disdain and a concept that many laugh at especially when it comes to love.  I take it so seriously that I lose myself sometimes in putting forth the effort it requires. Part of me is angry that I love so much I give my all and the other part is ashamed to only give some and not all.
I have never been a person that set boundries well.  I have always given and given until it hurt.

Then one day I stopped.  I started a new phase of my life where I stood for myself alone. I listened to only my own thoughts and opinions and I went and did only what I thought was right.  I had no standard but my own and my standard was full of selfishness, pride, immediate gratification, and self satisfaction.  Only now do I look back and realize that I built that world of my own for protection from pain, to toughen myself up to the point of not caring, to stop the hurt.  Honestly to just be left alone.  Lonliness was easier than pain.

Only as I have gotten older, as I have started my relationship with God have I looked into why my innocent young self gave so much to people.  Because that is how I was supposed to be.  I was built to give, I was built to love, and God gave me strength to survive that love.
Strange I know that I would use the word survive in the same sentence as the word love, but that is sometimes what I do in my relationships with those I love most, I survive.

Love is a risk, not a calculated and thought out risk, a dive in and thrive, throw caution to the wind, commit and don't look back affair.  Love is amazing and wonderful but it contains the ability to tear you to pieces.  The question is, how do you put yourself back together after it does?  By hiding, building a wall, staying away from relationships because they force you to grow, to expand, to build more love?
Or do you suffer and in your suffering become more aware of your capacity to love?  Do you look to God and ask him to fill you back up when you are empty?  Do you take your feelings about love and set them aside so that you can begin to actually experience love again?
Do you study out love?  Do you study the people that you love to love them better? Do you love without regard as to how it is taken or how you may be hurt?
Do you love only those that you deem lovable, or do you push and stretch yourself to love those that you can't stand to be around?

For me love has always been an all in concept.  A commitment. Til death do us part not just in marriage but in friendship and family relationships as well. I thought that I was strange to want to love this way, I thought that love being hard was a reflection of my failure and not a reflection of my success.  I was wrong. 
My ability to continue to be hurt because I want love that is real, and true, and sacred is the love that will carry my through this life.  My heart being vulnerable will cause me to struggle endlessly, but it will also allow me to love in ways that I never thought possible and experience joy that does not end.  Getting my feelings hurt strengthens me but not in the way that I originally intended, not to be strong and carry on, but to be weak and allow God to carry me on.

The hurt heart of Kris is the best one, because it keeps going along and hurting but learning and growing and expanding in the process allowing it to love more deeply.  Those moments of clarity about love and how right it is to keep loving can be few and far between in this world.  Praise God this is not the only world I will live in and that this world is not my forever home.  This world is where I practice loving so that as I get better and better at it God will fill me with more and more to share and give to others.
Amen for when that day comes.  It's closer and closer every moment.  I am more and more loved every second.  I am less and less scared all the time.

Kris

What is love?

I have a multitude of friends from different walks of life, different backgrounds, different personalities, and different religions. I have friends that are 16 years old and friends that are in their seventies. I have friends that have different political beliefs, different societal beliefs and different thought processes. The one thing that every one of my friends has in common is that they all believe in love.

Now when I say that they believe in love that doesn't just mean the amazing, gooey, wonderful stuff. It also means the heart wrenching, hurts so much I'm not so sure I'm going to make it kind.

I believe in the sanctity of love, some people will read that and equate it with marriage, I do too, but when I talk about the sanctity of love, marriage is not the only thing that comes to mind. My love for God, my love for my son, my love of the people in my life that not only comfort me but challenge me, those things come to mind too.

Love is directly related to truth for me, and at the same time I can't believe that love isn't something completely supernatural. Unconditional love is something that I strive for every day but isn't something that I am always successful at.

It's so easy to "fall in love", or say that you love someone or something. This at times makes love not as magical or amazing as it is meant to be. This is something that I utterly adore about my husband. He only says those words when he really means it. Not because I said it first, not because I need to hear it but because he genuinely means it, which makes it that much more special.

I think that we all equate words with love, and of course words can convey love. So can silence, so can holding hands, so can acts of kindness that you weren't expecting. A friend who always shows up, a person that tells you what you need to hear instead of what you want. Someone who loves you enough to see that you could be hurting yourself and others with your words or actions and tells you so.

All people see love differently. All people need it. Writers and artists and philosophers have used it as a subject for years. Hollywood movies use it as a continual subject. But most times it's about the fun falling in love part, or the passionate painful love, very rarely is it about the enduring, tenderness that transcends all else and overcomes the worst of fates and circumstances.

Very few times is agape love (unconditional love) talked about. Love is not just good feelings and hugs. Love is messy, and dirty, and scary, and hard. Love is completely worth it.

Without love (and for me the love of God that fills me), I am a shell. I am faking it through life to always find the elusive love that I need instead of seeing it in the people around me without Him.

I once had a friend that I used to sit and talk to at a coffee shop in downtown Pittsburgh. We used to sit in the window seat and people watch to find everything wrong with the people that walked by, it was easy. Then one day we decided to change the game, we started looking for things that we liked about each person. That took some creative effort, it started with shallow things like people's shoes and ended up being things like "I love that she's lifting her face into the sun, she's beautiful when she does that". The point being that it's easier sometimes not to love than to see the heart and soul of another human being.

People think that love is subjective, that they get to pick and choose who they get to love and bestow their gift on. But I don't believe that. I think that loving another person, be it your best friend or the stranger that you held the door open for is why we are here. That if we are filled to the brim with love then we can't help but share it.

God specifically made me who I am to love every other person that I could reach. Not only to make sure that they knew that I loved them, but more so that he loves them. My sole purpose in love is to reflect the amazing love that I was made with, that gets me through my days and that is a direct reflection from the one true God that is the source of it.

Amen for the love in your life. I hope that in some small way I add to it.

K

 

A love like no other

This past week has been a roller coaster ride.  It was Easter, my birthday, midterms, family, work, and then I think from pure exhaustion, I got a cold.  But wow, this ride has been amazing.
I felt closer to God, my husband, my family, and my friends all at once this week and I am always stunned by the love that God has surrounded me with.
I have never really been a big gift person (don't get me wrong, I don't refuse them).  I have always been and continue to be a woman who appreciates someone doing something for me or has genuinely lovely things to say.
For example, my fifteen year old son got up every day except for one over his entire spring break at 6:30am to take out the dog for me because it was my birthday.  I could have cried.
My brother, who knows that I have recently grown to love cooking sent me a pressure cooker.  It was a gift, but a gift with love and thought and effort.
My friends all wished me a happy birthday on FB, I got cards from family and even one from my mom's best friend that told me that I was her hero because I had been through so much and still abounded in joy.  That did make me cry.
I celebrated with lunch with my sister in law, who's birthday is two days before mine.
I had an amazing Easter dinner and birthday cake with my momma and her side of the family.
The list of blessings goes on and on.
But the biggest gift that I got was that my husband and son, my mom and dad (Vince), and my friend Andie came to church to praise God with me.  My heart was so full sitting there surrounded by God's love and theirs that I couldn't keep the smile off of my face.
Sharing God with the people that I love most is always my favorite thing.  It is something that is meant to shared in love.  God loves them more than I ever could.
Seeing God touch other people's lives regardless of how small of a difference it may make is always a thrill for me.
Letting God use me to do it is that amazing roller coaster that I was talking about.  It takes my breath away. 
My life is always busy, it is always moving and changing and expanding and growing and with God at the helm I never know where I am going. 
Somehow knowing doesn't seem to matter as much as it used to because every now and then, like on this Easter He allows me a glimpse at His plans.  I watch him move people to his purpose, I feel Him move me.
Psalm 119:33-35
 - Teach me, Lord, the way of your decrees,
that I may follow it to the end. Give me understanding, so that I may keep your law
and obey it with all my heart. Direct me in the path of your commands,for there I find delight.

I delight in God's love and I was blessed to delight in it with so many people that I love on Easter. That really was the best birthday gift ever.

K