Love and Marriage Series...Unselfish Love

Well...just as I promised...here it is...my husband has composed an amazing post for me to share on my Love and Marriage Series regarding "Unselfish Love".  I hope that it blesses each and every one of you that read it.  Here is his post, in his words:

First off, I want to thank my wife for allowing me to share my two cents about love. It seems to me that many people view love a lot like they do life. Each can seem so complicated at times that we’re unable to wrap our brains around it, and sometimes it can seem so simple. Why is that? A question that I have asked myself many times when one or the other seemed resolute.

I heard recently that “natural laws don’t have constitutions”. And while it may be true that natural laws aren’t governed, they still must follow a set of guidelines in order to hold true. What do I mean by this? Well, we can’t tell Mother Nature that she can only snow on our trees and grass during the winter, and not the roads. Mother Nature’s guidelines indicate that when there is enough moisture in the air and the temperature is within a certain range, it will snow. …And who knows, it may just snow in the atmosphere, and not ever touch the earth. There is nothing we can do (outside of a lab) to change or manipulate natural laws like snow, gravity, inertia, Love.

Wait, how does love fit into that?

Love, too, has its own set of rules, and we continue to fool ourselves and others into thinking we can manipulate them. I mean, clearly the concept of love or being loved is so prevalent, that it consumes every part of our lives. Any “good” story that we read about, or see a movie or play about, involve love. Over half of all songs ever written deal with the subject, and we even have a special holiday devoted to it. It’s something that we all have a built in desire for in its truest form.

The very unfortunate part is that we are all taught (sometimes very differently) at an early age what love equals by watching those around us. We’re taught unknowingly how others attempt to govern and manipulate the rules of love, and it seems that most of us were shown that love is a very selfish act.

I have noticed recently that when young people get married (and I’ve had to include myself in this), they tend to enter it with a selfish concept that they will be benefiting from their union because someone else will be “taking care of them”. For instance, they might think they will have someone to always cook for them, or someone to constantly fix things around the house for them. In other words, we try to govern the rules of love by imposing on the other what our conditions are for feeling loved. Our love therefore looks like this.

We are taught to give when given to, to be kind when receiving kindness, to forgive once forgiven, apologize once apologized to, and to never let anyone get one over on us. As a natural law, love cannot be governed in this way and therefore, by default is not love. These are not rules that pure love lives by, and for that reason, each of these actions have its own natural consequence; usually to hurt and push people away.

Pure and beautiful snow can only exist when you have moisture and cold just like pure Love can only exist where there is a selfless heart.

You may have heard “Pure love casts out fear”. It casts out fear because its recipient’s know that they will not be taken advantage of, treated harshly or unkindly, and they are free to open themselves up to its rewards without fear of hurts or regrets. True love’s arrow does not go both directions, because it gives without expecting to receive. It gives without trying to control. It gives freely, thinking only of benefiting the other person.

Now, I’m not suggesting that any one person can love perfectly all the time. I’m a prime example of that. But I do try every day to criticize less and encourage more; complain less and help more; desire less and give more; to be less proud and more humble. I want true love to have its way in my life, and I want to be free from the natural consequences of selfish and controlling “love”.

And through this process I’m finding that pure love is patient with those who are not loving (selfish, prideful, mean spirited), and that it does not take their negative actions personally. Rather, it recognizes that people generally feel so bad about themselves that they feel it necessary to act in an unloving manner. It allows others to act the way they feel is necessary to deal with a particular situation with an amount of sympathy for not understanding the way real, pure love truly acts.

This is the Love that I strive for and hope that you will as well. So I say, let it snow, and let’s enjoy the pureness of a natural, ungoverned, un-manipulated love in our hearts.

Give a shout if this was helpful to you in any way or if you have questions or comments.

Michael


How thought provoking...huh?  He and I have discussed this on several occasions...and we are always striving to live an unselfish, pure love...although we sometimes falter.  Feel free to leave a comment if you were blessed by this post...questions...comments.

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