love & forgiveness : to experience one you must also find the other

I like experience without analysis.

I don't need to anticipate the next move, guess the ending to the story, immediately identify patterns, figure out the why. I don't need to know. For me, the research, the understanding, the knowledge - it's a separate process. I can engage it, or I can be just as happy being in the moment and letting my emotions be the judge. [My husband is the opposite - he must know IMMEDIATELY]

In the past couple years, God has been speaking to me about knowledge - and how valuable it is to Him, and our life together. I was amazed to discover how often His word places value in getting knowledge and wisdom - opening my eyes to see things from God's perspective, loving what He loves, and having the heart of someone who truly knows God and His character.

So, one day I was reading this oh so familiar passage on love - and He challenged me to really look at each of these words, without skimming past and saying of course I do --

love seems like such a simple, intuitive command and yet --

love is patient - quietly, steadily persevering

love is kind - benevolent, considerate, helpful

love does not envy - discontent, covetousness

love does not boast - pride, exaggeration

love is not arrogant - sense of superiority, set importance, entitlement

love is not rude - impolite, discourteous

love does not insist it's own way - me first, then you

love is not irritable - easily angered, annoyed

love is not resentful - regarding behavior as injury instead of forgiving

love does not rejoice at wrongdoing - hurting others on purpose

love rejoices with truth - all truth, hard to hear truth,

truth you don't like, truth that doesn't make sense--

love bears all things

love believes all things

love hopes all things

love endures all things

love never ends, never fails, never gives up

may faith, hope, love abide

Clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against each other. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. [Colossians 3:12-14]

What I have discovered in this process of love -- it's impossible to do on your own, without Him, without grace, without forgiveness. Impossible.

I come into relationships with all my flaws and all my hopes and expectations and I get hurt and I build up walls and I hide and I have shame and rejection and not-enoughness and why doesn't my life look like her life and look to quit - and is relationship even worth it?

But forgiveness - real forgiveness - where I look all my real and large feelings square in the face, where I own EVERY SINGLE ONE, where I bring them all up in their trueness and rawness and I release somebody else from the debt that they can never repay because they didn't get it and they are different than me and nobody ever will be the same as me anyways --

I CAN WALK AWAY FREE. I'm not a slave to their apology. I don't have to do it their way, and I don't have to look like them. I can be me, in my most open and authentic and vulnerable and true way - and allow them to be them and as all of our stuff collides I meet with God to forgive all of the real things that hurt.

And without forgiveness, there's no love to give.

Here -- with Him in our midst, safeguarding our vulnerable hearts - we are free to love without fear, without fragmentation, without reservation, even when all the disappointments come. Here our hearts stay open and keep moving forward, abounding in love more and more, tender and without offense until the Day we see His face, and love is forever perfected. [adaptation of Phil 1:9-10]