What Does Love Look Like?

 I have come to a place in my life where I consider myself more of a spiritual person and less of someone following a set of religious rules. Ironically enough, the longer I pursue God in light of this freedom from rules, the more I have seen my gravitation toward the God of my youth, the God of the Bible. I still hold a giant grudge against so called Christians, and as I learn to pray more, I realize I have to pray about this because this giant boulder on my shoulder ain't goin' away without some divine intervention. You know, we have all been hurt in life. No one gets out of this journey unscathed. Ultimately, no gets out alive. 

I've come to realize that believing in God and even the God of the Bible is very different that swallowing the fundamentalism bullshit that has been served to me over the years. 

God is love. And as such, God desires good for everyone. Another blogger wrote yesterday about kindness and how kindness has essentially bit them in the ass. And not to expect kindness from them any longer. I am a big proponent of kindness. As I am of love. Agape love. All we need is love. Love is the answer, what was the question? Love, love, love. More love, less hate. Hate is too great of a burden to bear, I will choose love. Love is patient. Love is kind. 

But I think we've taken the Kindness Revolution and the Love Wins ideal too far. When do we count? How can we be kind all time and still "win" (for lack of a better term)? Sometimes I think we have to choose what kind of love and what kind of kindness we will pursue. Appearing kind in a world of hate is admirable, but if it allows others to manipulate us and trample us, what is the point? We must be kind and loving to ourselves first. And that doesn't always look like love, peace, kindness to the outside world. Or even to ourselves. Because we've been shamed into believing we must not hurt anyone else even if it means we are withering and dying inside and our souls are screaming that love is a lie and begging to be saved. This is when we are the only ones who can save us. God made us intelligent. God made us empathetic. But God (the crazy, unorthodox God I've come to know) never intended for us to lay and down and be trampled by people because we "love" them. Sometimes love looks like a mental wrestling match where we triumph over our own crippling thoughts and misconceptions and find the truth of self-love. Love and Kindness aren't always easy and the waters aren't always tame, sometimes it's a stormy sea of violent weather that sets us free. And this is also love. 

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