Fearless Love

So I am seriously learning a lot about love lately. And not in the way that I might have expected to talk about, or think I should learn it...but in a way that hits home hard. I gotta admit, I've circled around this mountain before....a few times even! God gives me this test a lot, each time on a deeper and more intense scale. I guess I'd call it "loving the unlovely." And no, it's not really about loving my enemies(we've scratched the surface of that, but not dug deep yet) or about loving those who are undesirable. On the contrary. It's about loving those who I love SO much, and learning how to love them when they don't do what I want, or act the way I want, or fit nicely into my plan of the way life should work to make me happy! :) Understand, these are not people who deliberately try to annoy me. In fact, I believe that they care about me very much. They are just clueless. Perhaps they don't know how to love in general, or how to love selflessly, or have no clue how to love me properly. Whatever the case may be, I've allowed them to hurt me tremendously. And this has affected my relationships in ugly ways. By withdrawing from rejection, by masking hurt feelings, by acting as if I don't care...or even by hurting deliberately in return. That one is the most harmful. Doesn't that make me even more at fault? By deliberately hurting those who never intended to hurt me? Awful thing. But true nonetheless. So where does all this come from?

I am the baby in my family. Youngest of four girls. And OHHH how my sisters gushed over me. Protected me. Took good care of me. I worked that "baby" status for all it was worth! But there comes a point in life when the "baby" is cast out into the real world and realizes...I'm not the center of attention here. Something must be wrong with the world! :) Or tragically, something must be wrong with ME. We do crazy things to get attention. We smother even our closest friends. We so crave love and affection that we will stop at nothing to get it....until we realize that attention never comes...and we withdraw and hide parts of ourselves, thinking surely WE are the problem. Neither extreme is right. But I did have to finally understand somewhere along the line that it's not all about ME. And that's when God began to teach me how to love sacrificially. And He placed just the right people in my life to draw out my ugly sides, and love me enough to CALL me on them, and made me loyal to them unconditionally because of a deep-rooted desire to love, and be loved. These lessons have been my most painful ones to learn, but also my greatest blessings.
I've failed in loving lately. I've fallen back into selfish withdrawing, or relentlessly smothering. Right now God has given me revelation...and peace. And my mission right now is to love. Love without fear of rejection. Without expecting anything in return. And love as deeply as I've been hurt. This will be my key to finally finding my lasting peace....freedom for those I love....and in the end, freedom for me as well. After one more trip around this mountain. :)