Family is one way we are both able to feel and express love hopefully readily and often. It's also an arena for practicing selfless and unconditional love. How much more difficult is it to love someone who knows how to hurt you and does it? It's all about opportunities! Boy do I fall flat on my face... sometimes daily. Thankfully most of my blunders and less extreme than flat on my face. Thankfully!
Through the more recent years, I've learned that our Heavenly Father loves me because I am unique among his daughters. The funny-awesome thing is that the same is exactly just as true for you (though maybe as a son) as it is for me!! Because we are fallible, we rarely love perfectly - even our children. So, it might seem unlikely or even impossible that God loves you as much as I know he loves me. Nonetheless, it is true and such a glorious and joyous truth!
No matter what I think of someone else's worth... because I look around me and see others doing far better than me! I know that even though I struggle in visible ways with things I really should have mastered by now, our Father loves me just as much in my foibles as he does another better-performing daughter in her accomplishments! How awesome is that!? Well, I think it's spectacular!
Loving others completely unselfishly and unconditionally is not among my spiritual gifts. Just so we're clear, you and me. I know a lot of things I'm not necessarily wonderful at actively living on a daily basis. I know, though, that as long as we don't stop trying we can never fail, we just keep on having opportunities to improve until the lesson is learned!
Although it may seem elementary to you, it took me until I was well in my 30s to realize that the feeling of like and the reality of love are not always companions. I can love someone without liking them. Just like I can love them without trusting them. Love can (and should) continue even when other feelings move like tides. Love, like joy, can be a solid rock beneath the changeable waters of the feeling sea of like.
Do you see love as a possible foundation stone, like joy?
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