I Have Never Loved Love.

I have never loved love. For as long as I can remember, I felt as if something was wrong with me. That while others were in a haste to find their happily- ever- after, others broken by the ripping of their hearts after a break- up, contemplating whether they should give love another chance, there I stood, confused.

I just couldn’t grasp it. What was so great about love, and why couldn’t I feel it?

It was never anything that concerned me enough to talk about. I was able to intellectualize love. “I can understand why he feels that way”, or, “I am sure that break- up must be really tough”. Yet, when it came time for me to live out this so-called “understanding”, I found myself caught in a lie.

“Uh oh, I think he is expecting me to love him back”!

Panic quickly consuming me as I realized I couldn’t fake it any longer.

I was able to construct the most seemingly loving messages, messages you would think Shakespeare himself had conjured up. I just was unable to perform the script I had so meticulously crafted. I felt like an imposter, I felt like I was lying to everyone around me. I didn’t feel what they felt, I feigned heartache, I was indifferent about losing people, and I didn’t understand how to make someone feel “loved”.

After losing some friends, and ending relationships, I finally sat myself down and tried to get to the bottom of my issue. I travelled down long paths in my mind, bringing me to locations I had long forgotten. It was there that I discovered my problem.

I do not love love.

I never had! My idea of love, the image that was so painfully crafted by my loved ones and close family, was never appealing.

Love was arguments, loud ones, the ones that gave little seven year old girls debilitating migraines. Love was fear, a fear of constant abandonment, a fear of never being good enough, a fear of not being protected. A fear that made you shut your bedroom door and make friendship with loneliness. Love was belligerent and drunk, love was mean, and love was never available.

This was the image of love that I had unknowingly carried around for all my years. I familiarized myself with it, and unintentionally expected everyone else to accept it too.

“This kind of love must hurt”, I said to myself. Intellectualizing yet again, instead of feeling.

Well, I guess it did hurt.

It probably hurt that little girl who knew no better, who held out her hands, begging for love desperately, only to receive crumbs, if even that. I guess it hurt when she thought she could try again, maybe try another way? Become someone they would want to love? Working extra hard, only to receive silence in return for her efforts. I guess it hurt her to the point of never asking for it again, to the point of actually running from it, for she soon learned that love was neither safe nor predictable.

It hurt her so bad, she vowed to never let it hurt her again. Convincing herself it was something she didn’t need, something she was safer without. Years and years of this, only leads one to numbness and apathy.

She carried on with life smiling, feeling no pain, so she thought, so she made others believe. Yet, she left trails of blood everywhere she went. Hurting people unintentionally, for she couldn’t understand how her actions could cause a pain she herself could not feel.

Somehow (God’s grace), she discovered a new path in her mind, that led her to a new understanding.

She never loved love simply because she never truly knew Love.

And then, she met Love Himself.

He introduced her to a love that never hurt, a love that was safe and kind, a love that was consistent, His love. He taught her how to love, day in, and day out, pouring His unending, merciful, & transformative love on her.

“We love because He first loved us” - 1 John 4:19.

She spent more and more time with Him, actually talking about things and not brushing them off. Laying her brokenness at His feet, and letting the rivers she kept locked in, flow freely. He helped her to stop intellectualizing, and start feeling. “Your feelings are safe with Me”, He told her. She began to trust again, knowing that He was not like man that He should lie. She held out her hands one last time, guarded, prepared to be let down.

He took out of her hands the wounds she clung to, so she could have room to hold His love in exchange.

Now, all she can ever talk about is

how much she loves Love!!

If you struggle to accept love, or struggle to pour it out, there is only one source that can help you with that. His name is Jesus, talk to Him. <3