The Right Way to Love

I dated before I met my husband and even professed love but that my friend wasn't love. I have given  and give my husband true love. Let me bring things into perspective.

We are supposed to hate our ex/es right? Reasons being they hurt us , left us broken😭😭🤷🏾‍♀ That is what we all know right? Well this is wrong in my view.We get hurt and are left broken because of our expectations. Yes no one hurts us when a relationship that ends and there is bitterness. We hurt ourselves. We allow ourselves to hurt and experience pain. This happens not just with our ex/es but in all our relationships. We love with expectations. We give with expectations. We love forgetting we need to love ourselves first. We give without seeking what we are receiving from ourselves.

Allow me to take us to my life manual the Bible.

*1 Corinthians 13:4-7*(NIV)

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

*Mark 12:31*

NIV 31  The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’There is no commandment greater than these.”

*1 John 4:19*

We love because he first loved us.

It wasn't until I deeply internalised the above verses that I realised I gave false love and confessed false love. I have loved others without loving me. Now that is wrong. I have had thoughts of this man is too good for me. This job is too big for me. That my friend is loving myself as I love my neighbour. In my eyes others are better. I can't see myself in the standard of that man or job. So guess my neighbour is suitable and I am not, right? Who would be loving themselves with such kind of thoughts?

Thereafter I thought, why does it hurt when a relationship ends? It hurts not because the other person did us wrong but because we loved wrong. We love with expectations. God's love for us is unconditional. What hurts God isn't because He loved us and we didn't love Him back. It's our sin that hurts Him. A person that truly loves you will be pained when you engage in evil. That is what hurts God. We instead hurt because we expected this and this from offering this love to so and so. We forget how God loves.

God loves in a liberating way. He doesn't say I won't love you because you are a thief. He continues to love us. We on the other hand love so and so because they do this and that. That is why if they don't we get hurt. They are not the ones that hurt us. We hurt ourselves.We do things for our children, employer, spouse , relatives and friends because they will do it for us. Only for them not to and we get hurt.  They don't hurt us. We hurt ourselves. Do things out of free will. Love out of free will. That is what God does. We are made in His likeness meaning we too are capable of doing the same.

Quit holding grudges because someone did this to you. You did it to yourself. All through your own expectations. I worked so hard and still got fired. 😭😭 This hurts because I was expecting my hard work to be a ticket to keeping my job right?🤷🏾‍♀ Do things for you. Because it pleases you and gives you satisfaction doing it. This has really given me so much peace and liberation. I hope you too get to try it and experience the same.