One lesson I am learning for getting through the hard times of breaking up is that love is not absent in this time. I have been framing it in my mind as me losing the love of my life, us losing whatever was keeping us together all this time, us losing the friendship along with it for a while. Loss seems to be the word of the day in this scenario.
But that's not entirely accurate. I am such a people pleaser, such an approval seeker. Although I hate to admit it, I assume that I have to do certain things in order to get the love I seek. I assume that what others provide me is ultimately what is going to fulfill me. My life and behavior seems guided by external factors and things beyond my control.
But I think that I have forgotten the breadth of ways to love others and to love myself. We hear "love your neighbor as yourself", and I always thought what came naturally to me as a sinful human being was to love myself first and my goal as a Christian was to turn that outward and focus on others. But if I loved people the way I love myself (or DON'T) especially in hard times, I would aliennate and demoralize everyone around me. I have missed the starting point that Jesus requires of me. What does it look like to love myself so much that i have a wealth of love overflowing to give others?
Furthermore, and the most important revelation I have had in a very thoughtful week is that sometimes love is in absence or in what we do NOT do. I try and try to prove my worth to people who matter to me. I work and work and exert myself and fall flat exhausted if my work doesn't.....well, work. But in this time where I have indeed fallen flat, I can see from this one situation with Liam that sometimes loving someone means stepping back and doing nothing. Loving someone may mean trusting their heart and their process, and trusting your own without them. Loving someone may mean renouncing the need for externals and abiding in a knowledge that love is not completely absent. This change of heart feels to me like the definition of faith. No wonder faith is so hard. :)
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