Loving Well

One of the deepest pains in the world is loving someone and not being loved back; to miss someone and they are not even thinking of you; to forgive someone and they have never admitted to being wrong or causing pain.

Loving well and being loved is what satisfies all. If I love well and someone loves me well then the paycheck does not matter, the career does not matter, and the falling apart house does not matter. However, love must be reciprocated or it depletes instead and does the opposite of what we expected it to do for us.

When love is passive and cannot return in the amount it is given out, it is painful and wrecks lives, homes and hearts.

A little son who watches and waits in the window for a father to come home from work. To have a father pat his head and sit in front of the T.V. instead. The son grows up and wants nothing to do with the father, the hurt is too great for him to come home Thanksgiving.

Or to love someone for all the right reasons. To desire more with someone who does not see how perfect you are together. How all the pieces fit perfectly except the other is blind and complacent always moving 3 steps forward and 5 steps back.

To have an employee you believed as loyal and you’ve given far more to him than what was promised. To treat your coworkers as family to find out there was a better offer elsewhere and none of that really mattered.

To not receive love from your husband and your eyes begin to wander to where else or in whom else could this love be reciprocated. So certain foods and looks become everything, it becomes obsessive. Secrets with men not your husband are now in hiding.

To love a friend, to give resources and time. To know them as trustworthy and to know everything between you is out in the open, to find out it all changes in a week’s notice.

This all hurts so deeply. Whether you are looking for love, or trapped in the idea of love. I can guarantee you are miserable. I can say this because I am miserable because I have experienced some of these as well.

I am so sorry. It was never meant to be this way. You were meant to be loved so fully, so deeply and so intimately. You were meant to have parents marvel over you or a love crazy over you. Love is not passive. Love is flowers eagerly awaiting your arrival when you’ve been gone long from home.

I heard the Lord clearly say this morning as I was thinking about all the ways we long to be loved and how it disappoints,

“As the son longs for a present father, I long for you. As a husband grieves over an unfaithful wife, you are unfaithful to me and betray me for other lovers. As a friend abandons, you abandon me. It is the same.”

As I want to be loved with the same love and care I put forth, the Lord has said that to me. “Emma, you haven’t loved Me as I love you.”

That stings deeper. How much more I have loved the things of Jesus more than Jesus. I am convicted and I want change. The more I gaze on people to reciprocate this love, the more I am left disappointed. The more I seek Jesus, the more I am content and full of life to continually dish out even when it cannot be returned. That is what He has done for us.

This love is deeper and harder. This is not easy and I cannot promise that I always want Him more.

This revelation just shows me that Jesus has more for me that I haven’t tapped into yet.

I was visiting late last night with my roommate, with the realization of “I think I push Him away at times because I am afraid what His light will reveal for me to give up.”