Love is what?

Transparency: I am currently in a spot with life where I am having to work hard to be encouraged and hopeful. 

Discouragement looms and often overwhelms. However, I am getting better at fighting back and looking up. Not for an escape or temporary fix. I am looking up for love—for a face looking back at me that sees me in my pain and discouragement, yet knows my heart in its purpose and value. 

Something I did not expect to read today did the job of punching my reality in the face while somehow simultaneously breathing newness of life. I came across some unfathomable stories of girls rescued from sex slavery that embittered and ignited my soul, making every ounce of justice and compassion in me burn. Hard to swallow. 

How can I be so consumed with my life that has not known any part of this level of brutality and evil? It all now seems trivial, grossly unaware and insufficient. Cerebrally, I know things in my life matter and have worth. But, being soberly reminded of the grace I have been given and how this life has the propensity to be so different in an instant is probably good for me. 

The reality of stories like the ones I had read was difficult to absorb, let alone try to reconcile. This is hard—in every sense of the word. Only one thing came to mind. 

Love. 

Love rushes in and breaks and grows and saves and sees and knows and moves. Love pushes some people to go and it causes others to stay. It is what redeems and what saves. It is what remains. 

Love overcomes evil. It defeats and drowns wickedness. Love fights for truth and it rejoices in freedom. Perfect love does. 

Love is not manipulated. We like to think we can morph it, and people definitely have warped understandings and declarations of it. Real, true, ground-breaking love requires letting go. In order to find it, to receive it, and to give it, we must let go of ourselves. Letting go of our images, understandings, concepts of how our lives should look in an effort to just be more like love. 

We as humans are very good at misunderstanding what real love is. Love transforms us and grows us; it challenges us and holds us and makes us feel like the best version of ourselves. It makes us weak and it makes us strong. It breaks us down and it shows no partiality or favoritism. Where love is absent so is light and life. 

Love teaches us to breathe. Actually, love reveals to us that we are breathing. That we are alive. Love moves us, it dispels fear. It chooses the other and welcomes them. It is kind and patient and enduring. It sees a way. It believes there is always a better way. It never surrenders hope, yet it always gives. Love is given and it is received. 

Love is more than a concept to be grasped. Love is a person to be known, to become like, to spend time choosing and learning. Love is letting go of idols. Love is in trust. Love is in vulnerability. Love is in purity and wholeness. Love is seeing value and appreciating it. Love is in surrendering. Love is in sacrifice. 

Love is why we are here and it is who we are here for. Love is revealed to humans, but it is not controlled or limited by us. Love shows up. Not always how we expect it to or when we want it to or even think we desperately need it to. Love can live inside of us. Love connects us. Love can redeem us. Love reminds us that we are, in fact, flesh and bone able to be broken and crushed and left for dead. Yet, love proves that we are chosen freely and sought after, able to change and grow and able to let go. 

To let go of the hurt, the misunderstanding, the brokenness, piece by piece in this process of becoming love. This process of becoming whole. Surpassing our understanding and making life out of nothing—this is love. 

And love remains. 

Turns out, I was made bitter towards evil and ignited by love. The truth is…well, Jesus. This love is the way, the truth and the life. I would be lying to you if I said it exists apart from God. Congrats, you are loved by what is infinite and out of your control. Scary, but also the safest way to be. There is such a thing as goodness, and it is found in love. A lot is to be lost when it comes to love, but the entirety of a life and soul is to be found.