This won't stop bouncing around the walls of my brain until I attempt to articulate it.
;)
One where you can be completely fulfilled by your creator.
You aren't waiting around for someone to arrive and save you from the mundane or your temporary world.
I've seen this quote floating around social media and heard it quoted by many folks, "One day someone will walk into your life and make you see why it never worked out with anyone else."
To live a life in wait for another to complete you? This seems awfully cruel. To not be allowed to experience the love and joy of your life, now. To wait an undisclosed amount of time in loneliness or social torment for someone else to validate your purpose or potential.
Whether you are single or already in a relationship/married to one that you struggle to connect with.
How can another person determine your happiness? Isn't it often the great love you possess for your significant other that leaves you vulnerable to the impact of immeasurable hurt caused by that same person? Does that mean they are not your true love?
Can I still experience true love and joy even if I never encounter the love of my life?
I believe, a resounding YES.
I have to remind myself that I don't believe in a God that values love in the same way that American society does.
He creates us with different capacities to love. Via C.S. Lewis-to experience love as affection (storge), friendship (philia), romance (eros), and agape (unconditional love).
In God, we experience all of these types of love. He is the one, true love of our lives...and he wants to have a close connection with us.
The story of his love for us is painted in the pain and infliction of human selfishness...and yet he is faithful to us. He is redemptive. He is love.
He is constant.
HE IS TRUE LOVE.
This place exists...where you can be in love with God and recognize your potential in him.Your ability to love is what completes you. Not who (in terms of people) you love.
You can experience different facets of love with those you encounter in your life.
In this place, you don't rest on the hope of a new relationship or the attention of others...and because of this, all relationships are a blessing to your life. Even in the struggle.
You are able to give more of yourself to others because through your intimacy with God, you learn the truest form of love... sacrifice.
You don't have to worry over giving pieces of your heart away to be misused because the love that you give is not yours alone. It's rooted in Christ. It is not self centered and does not only pacify a need for company or affirmation.
Even when others let you down, or don't show up.
In your intimacy with God, you experience true love.
1 Corinthians 13:5-7New International Version (NIV)
"5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. "
And any relationships or friendships that enter your life are tangible ways of demonstrating the love you experience through your creator.
Love is 1 Corinthians 13:5-7 because it is God. Not because we have chosen the perfect people to build a life with.
I think this is why it's so important to experience God together in community, in family, in marriage, etc, etc. When we experience him together, we learn how to reflect true love to one another.
Ok, I'm done rambling. Haha :)
Peace and love!
Tiff
Reference:
1 John 4:7-10New International Version (NIV)
God’s Love and Ours
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Es el fin
