Lessons on Love
Father’s Day is a few days away, which for some reason, has me thinking about love. Actually, ever since our supposed to be 8 hour but is always more like 12 hour drive to the beach, I’ve been pondering love. Most likely because all of the reading I did on the way to the beach, and while at the beach, shared the common thread of love.
The reason Father’s Day has me thinking about love is because as I read those books, I realized that I have learned the most about sacrificial love from my dad and my husband; the two father’s closest to my heart.
I’m thankful to have had the kind of men in my life who have loved me well and shown me what love looks like. Not everyone gets that, and I write this fully aware of the disparity of experiences we all have with parents, partners, and other relationships where love is supposed to be central, but isn’t.
Thankfully, I also know that it isn’t too late for anyone to find the kind of love that breathes strength, acceptance, and healing.
Here are a few things I learned about love from my vacation reading. I will share the quotes and if I’m tech savvy enough provide the links to the books:
1. The Returnby Lacey Sturm
“And the greatest gift you can give the world is your love. Love brings life everywhere it goes . . . Because when we choose love, the ripple that comes from that choice is life. Life and more life. It turns into a wave of life”(from Lacey Sturm’s The Return).
One of the game changers for me in reading The Return was the author’s aim to seek out on a daily basis, how to be love.
In my case, I felt challenged to start finding ways to daily be more intentional about showing love to my husband. For pretty much all of our years with babies and pregnancies- and with five kids, that was a lot of years- he got whatever leftover energy and attention I had, which was usually none. So now that our youngest is four, it’s a good time to cultivate new habits to be more mindful of how to love him back, which is surprisingly easy after how well he has taken care of me without asking for much in return.
2. Everybody Always by Bob Goff
“Quit waiting for a plan; just go love everybody.”
“Loving people means caring without an agenda. As soon as we have an agenda, it’s not love anymore.”
“Jesus said it wouldn’t be what we said we believed or all the good we hoped to do someday. Nope, He said we would identify ourselves simply by how we loved people. It’s tempting to think there is more to it, but there’s not. Love isn’t something we fall into; it’s someone we become.”
“Simply put, we can stop waiting for a plan and just go love everybody. There’s no school to learn how to love your neighbor, just the house next door. No one expects us to love them flawlessly, but we can love them fearlessly, furiously, and unreasonably.”
Get this book. Two things I got from it. First, Bob provides profound examples of love from his own life. The two that struck me most were how he and his family loved the widow across the street and how he forgave a witchdoctor who had done unspeakable harm to children.
From that I somehow I realized that I can’t use my own brokenness as an excuse for not loving well. I can’t wait until I stop being wounded by the sharp edges of other broken people before I start loving more widely and more fully. My places where I still need healing are not sufficient excuses for not, as Bob admonishes, loving everybody always. (As a side note, I shared this epiphany with the husband- so when my cynical, snarky side comes out he enjoys simply saying, “Hey Lane- everybody always.” He thinks maybe I need to have everybody always tattooed somewhere on my body. I'm asking God to engrave it on my heart.
3. The Alchemist by Paul Coelho
“It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse. And that’s where the power of love comes in. Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are”
“This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there's no need at all to understand what's happening, because everything happens within you.”
“Why do we have to listen to our hearts?" the boy asked.
"Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you will find your treasure.”
This book is why I love to read good fiction and books like these are what inspired me to major in literature/communications and become an English teacher. It has me, at midlife, seeking to love myself and seek my personal Legend in such a way that I can adventurously unearth and be led to the treasures that my Creator placed in my heart.
So there it is. My book report from my summer beach vacation! Sacrificial love is definitely the trending theme. Keep your eye on Soul Care Place’s Instagram account because I have a few more quotations I am planning to share.
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