Thoughts About Love

What is love anyway, and how have I convinced myself so many times that I am “in it?” Over the past year, I have been struggling with discerning whether or not you feel you love someone or you can just choose to love someone (is one supposed to come before the other?), understanding what it means to love someone, and putting that understanding into practice. I have been with my boyfriend for a little over a year. I want to say that most of the time, I am over the moon in love and daydreaming over the wedding Pinterest boards I’ve curated. But what follow the peaks, come the valleys: the arguments, cold shoulders, and passive aggressive one-word responses - and suddenly I find myself questioning again whether or not we are supposed to be together, whether or not he is the one. One of the worst feelings is feeling like you don’t recognize the person you are talking to - because they say something you never thought they’d say, or they display characteristics you never thought they had. Then suddenly, you are questioning if you really even knew them in the first place.

There was one day where I felt convicted of something that God was trying to put in my heart, and I found it in Jeremiah 3. When the people of Israel turned away from God, he was not merely angry at their unfaithfulness, he was heartbroken. His beloved bride was unfaithful to Him and yet He was willing to forgive and say , “Return, faithless people, for I am your husband. I will choose you..” All the selfish thoughts came to the forefront of my mind and it made me realize that the things that I expected from my relationship and the things I was angry about were selfish and self-centered. Why does God bring us into relationships with another person? Is it so the other person can make us happy? Yes, partially. But above all, we were called to loved others because He first loved us. We are in relationships so we can learn to love like Jesus did. Sometimes it’s painful, under-appreciated, and at times maybe even feels unrequited. But I believe that in the end, we will have been sharpened by loving someone else.

We are apt to think that everything that happens to us is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching, viz. into character. We shall find that the spheres God brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something. - Oswald Chambers