Thanksgiving of Love - My View On Love After 22 Years.

  During a time where we celebrate Thanksgiving, I believe it is important to remember to be thankful for the love that has been placed in our lives. Not just to say we are thankful, but to have a clear understanding of what love is, how it is designed, and how to embrace it. I hope you enjoy my post below, but also have a wonderful Thanksgiving and act upon this post. Loving others not only during this time, but throughout each year.

"Love hurts when it is broken apart, simply because it is not meant to be broken."

   It is not the absence of love that causes pain, but the neglect to nurture the love one has inside for another. What can remain the same without maintaining and what can change with abandonment? Love is exactly like fitness. Some people are naturally thin, some average, and some large. Each body is unique in size and shape, but also capable of being defined. With each body, there are different strengths and weaknesses. While one person may have defined legs with average arms, another may have defined arms with average legs. Some may have a more difficult time getting in shape, while with others it could be much easier to gain definition in their body. If any person completely abandons personal fitness, their body will decline in every way possible. It may not happen the day after they stop working out, or the week, month, or year... but eventually the definition will waste away. It takes dedication in every area of fitness; cardio, strength training, mental stability, and healthy eating to be as defined as possible. Each person makes the decision in their daily walk on how defined they want their body to be based upon the choices they make. As one stops fitness and continues with life, they will see the declining transformation yet not many will make a change until the definition of their body is completely gone.

Are you beginning to see where I am going with the fitness analogy in reference to love?

   When a person falls in love they are doing everything possible not just to maintain the same status of feelings, but take their partners feelings to the next level. They are building definition in the relationship so it can reach the level of love, or the highest love possible. 

Ingredients of L-O-V-E

1 tsp Sacrificing own desires

2 tsp Hope

1 tsp Patience

1 tsp Kindness

1/4 cup Trust

1 tsp Nurture

2 tsp Joy

1/4 cup Honor

2 tsp Faithfulness

3 tsp Protecting

1/3 cup Prayer

1 cup Loving

Obviously the measurements are examples, but these are the main ingredients of love. Once you are in love, why would you not continue to use the same ingredients and expect the same taste? If you are only putting a quarter, half, or even 95% of the ingredients into something - leaving out one simple thing can make all the difference. If you only work out your legs yet do nothing to the upper body... do you not think that it would throw the entire body's appearance off?

Falling in love is easy, but staying in love requires maintenance. It is about dedication and giving 100% even when you are getting 0% in return. Love is selfless, and until a person makes the powerful decision to sacrifice their life for another because of a choice, not a feeling... then they will experience what true love is. Love is not like the movies where two people fall in love, have one dramatic time, make up, and then live happily ever after. Love is making the choice to maintain every area of love in good and bad, sickness and health, distance and closeness, youth and aging, richness or poverty, and through achievements and disappointments. It is not about "doing you", getting revenge, giving up, or neglecting the other person because you are not fulfilled. Love does not mean that you have a perfect relationship; it means pushing through the disagreements, respecting each other when it is hardest, finding hope when there seems to be nothing left, and being thankful for what you have when it feels like you have nothing. God is love and He demonstrated what it meant to truly love someone. He died on the cross so that the ones he loved more than anything could have hope and an eternal life. He gave everything He could out of love. God did not promise that love would be easy, but He did tell us that love never fails.

If you are wondering why your love is failing, why you cannot find a lasting love, or why you do not have a movie-like love then I hope you take a look at yourself first and foremost. Do you give 100% of yourself, even when you get nothing in return? Do you leave out any of the ingredients of love? Have you emotionally let go of yourself and neglected to work out in certain areas of love? Love hurts when it is separated because it is not meant to be broken. Separation is a temporary fix, but the underlying problem will always be there until the love is maintained in all areas. 

Women to Men:

Compliment him

Encourage him

Honor and respect him

Do not speak negatively of him

Laugh with him

Focus on the positive

Pray for him
Forgive him

Dress up just for him occasionally
Communicate your feelings, just not all the time
Do activities he enjoys with him

Serve him, gladly.

Men to Women:

Compliment her

Encourage her

Cherish her

Do not speak negatively of her

Laugh with her

Listen to her
Communicate your feelings, a lot of the time

Pray for her
Forgive her
Cuddle her

Take her on dates

Reminder her that you love her, often.

The opposite of love is not hate, but neglect.

Prayer: God, I pray that you form me into the man/women that you created me to be, not the one I have tried to become on my own. I pray that when you bless me with love that I can continue to maintain my love through making the sacrificial choices so that the one I am with knows that I not only feel love for them, but I have made the choice to love them through every circumstance. Whether the love I encounter is with a significant other, a friend, or a family member I pray that you provide me with the ingredients of love so that I can never neglect the blessing that you have placed in my life. Help me to be thankful for the love in my life during this season of Thanksgiving, but also year round.

My Tip On Motivating Love: Frame a photo of the one you love that reminds you of the time that you have felt the most love for the person. Hang it on your wall, put it next to your bed, or have it somewhere that you will see every single day. Having a visual with feelings attached to it will help motivate you in hard times of love, but also remind you how blessed you are in the best of times.

Luke 6:31
Do to others as you would have them do to you.

John 15:13 
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

1 John 3:18 
Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 

Is it really the "Life of a True Christian?"

   It has been a LONG time, but I finally feel ready to write again. It has been years since I have written on this blog - not because I forgot, but because I did not feel worthy. The title, "Life of a True Christian" scared me too much to be anything less than perfect. I did not want to write about my faith, my fears, my struggles, or my pain while I had what most would call a hypocritical relationship with God. I am here writing that being a "Christian" is not constant bliss without pain, problems, or mistakes. In the past year I have read the book of Job several times; too many to count. Job was a humble man of God that had been blessed abundantly; he had a wonderful wife, children, friends, house, and career. Satan wanted to prove to God that if he took away everything from Job that he would turn on the Lord - so God said that he could try. Job lost everything - and I mean EVERYTHING. After losing everyone, he said...

 "I am nothing but skin and bones; I have escaped only by the skin of my teeth." -Job 19:20

    My senior year of high school I broke up with my "high school sweetheart" and ended up going through a severe heart break. Instead of bettering myself as I planned, going to bible college, and being patient I tried doing things my own way. I had never been to a party or had any alcohol to drink until the summer of 2009 after graduating high school. I had never seen a drug, kissed another boy, or had friends that were involved in this type of life style. I was what most would call "goody too shoes", "innocent", "sweet", "shy", or "Christian". It is a common assumption that Christians are perfect, without blame, have perfect families, jobs, homes, and lives... right? That is what I thought, and since I didn't feel like I had the perfect family, boyfriend, career, home, and life I felt hopeless or as if God had abandoned me. Everything that I had prayed for and wanted in life had fallen apart, and I had made everything worse.

   I not only got drunk, but got alcohol poisoning many times from June of 2009 to July of 2011. I thankfully stayed away from drugs and other harmful things, but the drinking was enough to wear me down. I lost jobs, lost my apartment, caused stress in relationships, lost my reputation, and became more lost then ever. My great aunt died, my cousin died, followed by my grandmothers death as well. I became very angry with God, just as Job did in the bible verse I quoted above. I felt like nothing, like I was just dangling onto life - and not by my own will. I wanted to die - I wanted to get in a wreck, be shot, have a heart attack, or just anything! One night in July of 2011 after doing so well for months, I fell into a deep depression. I drank so much that I had to go to the hospital. After evaluation, embarrassment, resentment, being sick, and $3,000 worth of bills I felt like I had lost EVERYTHING - just like Job.

    It turns out that God had never left my side - but I had walked away from His. Satan wanted me to believe that God was punishing me, and he has probably done that to many of you as well. You see... God knew my high school sweet heart was not the husband He had planned for me, my jobs were not ones that I needed to have, my apartment was not a place that honored Him, and that my family members were called home to heaven for a reason. He did not take these things away to hurt me, but to mold me into who I need to be. Even though life can hurt, bring you down, and cause you to do things you will regret... you have a choice. I can tell you from my experience that participating in temporary moments of happiness will never fill the God shaped hole inside of each one of us. We were created by God, designed by God, molded by God, and have a hole in our heart that is specifically for God to fill. 

   Being a Christian is not about being perfect, having the perfect family, perfect career, perfect home, or perfect life. Being a Christian means that you admit that you cannot do it alone and that you need God. It means that you understand that after all you have been through, you really don't know what it best for you. It means that the LAST thing you think is that you are perfect and have a perfect life. It means that you are willing to trust God even when you are rock bottom and hold on to that string of faith! Even after Job lost everything and hoped for death, he still had that string of faith he was holding onto. Satan finally gave up - something God knew would happen. God blessed Job even more than before and gave him an incredible amount of joy for holding on in the darkest of times. I am writing this specific blog with some of my past in hopes that when you see "Life of a True Christian" you are not quick to judge, but quick to realize that we all fall short of God's glory and have so much in common.

   We cannot live in fear to share our faith because of our past. We cannot live in fear to share our faith when we are going through hard times. We can never live in fear of being a Christian or being afraid to admit all of our imperfections. We will be hated, scolded, watched like a hawk, made fun of, called hypocrites, and much more. We cannot listen to the world - because all that matters is what Jesus would say. We are not on earth to please the people and be one with the world but please God and to share the gospel to the world. What better way to share the gospel than to share your story? Your testimony is what encourages, inspires, and causes the love of God to move! You never know who is needs to hear that they are not the only ones who have fallen, been hurt, or felt hopeless. Job felt hopeless thousands of years ago and God came through for him. God will do the same for you!