Love isn't "Puffed Up"

posted Apr 20, 2013, 1:57 PM by Love Like Giants   [ updated Apr 20, 2013, 1:59 PM ]
Hello Friend,

I have written you a letter I will call a "Love Note" as a way to help me gain a better understanding of Love, reflect more deeply on my experience with it and help other people learn about Agape Love. I will write and send a "Love Note" like this to a different person each day for thirty days. It is important for me to focus on my personal experience with Love, not give advice, direction or suggestions. For this reason, my "Love Notes" will always go to someone I have never met and know nothing about. We are strangers, but I am hopeful that what I write will somehow have meaning to you.

I am now eighteen days into writing daily "Love Notes". It is rainy, cold, my husband is crabby and tense, and on the one day we were invited to do something fun in the evening, he has to work. He has been very uptight for the last few days, and I keep probing and prodding, trying to figure out why, but to no avail. I always worry it is something I did when people around me are upset. Love is teaching me that I am not the center of the universe, that every unhappy person doesn't draw me to the cause of it, and as I said, Love is teaching me this; I have not completely learned this lesson yet. Otherwise, I would not be mentally searching for things to feel guilty for just because he is upset, and sitting here with "that feeling" in the pit of my stomach, even though I'm not aware of having done anything wrong. A person who learns to "do" Love has honesty, and does not think more or lees of themselves. It is an underlying strength that comes out of being "meek", and this unearned "guilt" I feel is a form of being "puffed up", which is clearly not an attribute of Love (I'm referring to its' qualities as described in 1Corinthians 13). It's funny, but I find it easier to be "puffed up" about negative things that happen than take credit for positive things I don't deserve credit for. Everyone is different, but any time I think more or less of myself than I really am in a situation, it is not honest. I have to stay willing to always self-examine and even investigate if there is a possibility I offended or hurt someone, but I have to know that I am not the center of the universe. That pit in my stomach is beginning to subside as I sit here writing, and I am confident that if I think more about beautiful things, like love, it will melt away completely. 

Well, that's my love letter to you; thank you for reading and I hope it made your day a little brighter. May God bless you and enrich your life. Of all the people I could have mailed this "Love Note" to, I chose you.  Your name was picked at random, but I am certain it wasn't by chance.

Sincerely,
Learning about Love
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