When I think about love, there are many concepts that come to mind. I think about God mostly. How vast and wide the mind is, incomprehensible about how deep and nonlinear it truly is. I love, love. Even when it gets muddy and messy, at the core of it is true beauty. Love can stretch you if you allow it to. Sometimes we pray for love, and God sends someone to be a mirror. We desire love, yet deep down we feel unworthy to receive it. How can we give something we do not have ourselves? I will break this down, if I have love…then that means I may give it. In order to obtain something, I must have received it. From somewhere, something, but that means I have it. If I have it, I will not mind receiving it. Unless, maybe what we were shown as love and formulated in our minds and in our hearts of what love is…maybe just maybe we got it all wrong. Now, let’s get back to the mirror reference. Sometimes we pray for love, and God sends us a mirror. Not to harm us, but to show us what true, unfiltered, raw love is. Agape. Filled with unwavering grace, forgiveness, freedom, and more. That in seeing ourselves in a pure mirror, we can see all of our imperfections…yes, all of the dirt. The guilt, shame, fear, feelings of inadequacy, confusion, grief, selfishness, ego, and more. However, not only can we see the mess, but so can the one holding the mirror up…and yet they love you anyway, like God does. They see the mess, and they are patient. You hurt them because of your brokenness, and you’re met with care and compassion, and yet they stay. Not because they are being abused, but because God has given them eyes to see and His heart, He placed them on assignment and gives them the strength, grace, and love to withstand. Sometimes the biggest mistake we can make is, instead of running toward the mirror to grow, to change, maybe to even experience this love…we choose to run away instead. But it is still there…the ache, pain, childhood trauma and wounds, all of it remains even after we have run far away. Love should never choke you, but it should heal you and set you free. I truly love, love and not only that…I love to freely love those who may have never experienced it in its fullness and freedom. The cycle of abuse will end when we embrace love, when we truly seek it with all of our hearts, and when we truly get to the heart of the matter. Hurt people, hurt people…but healed people, heal people.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 TPT

“If I were to speak with eloquence in earth’s many languages, and in the heavenly tongues of angels, yet I didn’t express myself with love,  my words would be reduced to the hollow sound of nothing more than a clanging cymbal. And if I were to have the gift of prophecy with a profound understanding of God’s hidden secrets, and if I possessed unending supernatural knowledge, and if I had the greatest gift of faith that could move mountains,  but have never learned to love, then I am nothing. And if I were to be so generous as to give away everything I owned to feed the poor, and to offer my body to be burned as a martyr,  without the pure motive of love, I would gain nothing of value.”

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1 Corinthians 13:4-7 MSG

“Love never gives up.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.

Love doesn’t strut,

Doesn’t have a swelled head,

Doesn’t force itself on others,

Isn’t always “me first,”

Doesn’t fly off the handle,

Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn’t revel when others grovel,

Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always,

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back,

But keeps going to the end.”