When I Didn’t Know What I Didn’t Know
I have never done the birthday month thing, but if this panoramic pancetta pestilent of a pandemic has taught me anything it is to celebrate something every day. So this year I am celebrating, giving thanks to God every single day for life, and reflecting on this walk of love.
Today’s reflection:
When I Didn’t Know What I Didn’t Know
When I didn’t know how to love, I didn’t know I didn’t know how to love. I did not realize this fact until I heard someone so passionately urge, “Mothers, love your children.” Those words of deep concern stretched their tentacles from the platform around the arms of each of us seated close enough for them to shake into loving action confused and unhinged me.
For me, love, at that time, was a four letter word. I’d never said or heard it said to me in any meaningful way. It was an odd, unwelcome word. But there I sat hearing the consequences my children, family and those in my sphere of influence would endure if I did not love them. The heart, passion and pleading of the speaker was so sincere I decided not to run from his urging. Instead I became desperate. Yes, I thought. I hear you. I really hear you telling me what I need to do. But how? How do I love? What does it even look like?
Learning to love required me to learn and unlearn what I’d come to know about it.
I needed a changed mind.
My first step to learning how to love was replacing old, damaging thoughts and beliefs about love I’d come to know through witnessing dysfunctional people relate and experiencing the damaging consequences to my heart from abuse. How did I do it? By turning to and pleading with Love Himself to teach me and help me.
The only way to learn what Love is and how to Love is to be taught by Love. Love desires to be found and to be sought. God has revealed Himself, Love, to the whole world, to every person He ever created. And He says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart.” So with my tattered, shredded, wrong thinking mind and heart I sought God. I looked up Love in the Bible. I read how and why He created Adam and Eve in Genesis. I read and I prayed. I prayed and I read. Until on one ordinary day I found myself saying I love you and smiling with a deep down joy I never knew, when I heard it said back to me.
God’s responding to my desperation to know how to love reminds me of Jesus’ response to a leper that showed up to Jesus and said he knew that if Jesus was willing to cleanse him, he would be healed. “Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him saying,“I am willing, be cleansed.”
God is always waiting to yes to our desperation to be rid of the things of this world that keep us unhealed. If love is a difficult, maybe a four letter word for you – Jesus is willing. He can touch you and heal you of un-love.
Stay encouraged.
Keep the faith.
You were born to live love and lead well.
