Learning to Love Without Ifs, Buts, or Whens

Every journal I start begins with a verse, and a short prayer that express how I feel God wants to grow me at that time. As I shared earlier, the verse I got was Song of Solomon 8:7, many waters cannot quench love... I'm writing a whole thesis on what it really means to love your neighbor, so this is definitely the time for me to be learning about love. I'm calling to mind that week in mid-November when we all sat and prayed and Victoria had a word for me about plunging deeper into the study of what love is.

Yesterday, after a morning spent traipsing around Boston and staring history in the face, I was ready for some reflection. It had been a long, wonderful weekend, but I needed more time. I counted blessings in my journal, nearly two hundred of them since Saturday. And then I remembered an incident from less than an hour earlier.

I was trying to consolidate mine and Betsy's belongings so as to make them easier to carry around, as we had to check out of our hotel and she was at her interview. As I repacked things, I was going to send her a note - I love you, but your packing style is messy.

I didn't say that, because before I could, it hit me:

I love you, but

That's a condition.

I wrote in my journal, Is my love really so superficially conditional? That I will love only when it is neat, tidy, convenient, easy? Surely that is not that love I've been shown in Christ! And is He not my example? O Lord, help my unbelief! Help my failure to love! If I cannot truly love a friend, how can I love an enemy, or a stranger? O to grace! 

I'd like to think I'm better than that, that this was maybe just one incident that doesn't matter that much. But as I searched my heart, I saw the same pattern, repeated over and over again, if not in my words, certainly in my thoughts, attitudes and actions.

I love them if I have time 

I love them, but not this quality 

I love them when it's easy 

I love them if they will love me back 

I love them, but not right now 

I love them when they're like me 

I love them if they have something to offer me 

I love them, but I don't know how to be there 

I love them when it makes sense to me 

Ifs, buts and whens

Agape - the love I've been shown, the love presented as my example to follow in Christ - has no room for that

It is selfless, sacrificial, and unconditional.

Unconditional, which means no conditions, no definitions of who is worthy of love, no limits, absolute, which means "not dependent on external conditions, complete"

Familiar words roll off my tongue

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice and wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

I like loving when its my way.

But that's not really love.

I am irritated, I resent.

But that's not love.

I like loving when the burden is light.

But that's not love.

Love bears all.