The Father's Love

I never quite knew the true definition of love until I collided into Abba Father's love. Like many of you, my perception of love was shaped by many Disney classics: Cinderella, Beauty & the Beast, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and my all time favorite; Aladdin. At some point in your life very young girl imagined herself a princess and being married to her prince charming to live happily ever after. Sounds pretty dreamy but yet accurate, right? Well these wonderful fairy tale stories have played their role in skewing our perception of what real love truly is.

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False Perception, Wrong Expectation

I am not saying that all facets of these movies are false. For example, you most definitely are a princess and it is extremely possible to one day be swept off your feet by your prince. However, what I am saying is that these stories can create a perception of what love is supposed to look like which will inadvertently lead to unrealistic levels of expectation when trying to give and receive love in real life.

What is Love?

From birth, our ideologies of love are shaped. As we continue to grow and develop our own experiences will also cultivate our internal understanding of what love truly is. Your biological father or the presence or absence of a male figure in your life will shape our love. The words of your mother will shape your love. The acceptance and rejection we experience will shape your love as well as the perspective of our culture, movies, and music.

Which leads us to the question, what is love? If we are each individually shaped by our own independent experiences, how then can we all truly know what love is and how to give it to others effectively? At one point in my life I truly believed that love was sharing bits and pieces of myself inappropriately because that is what the other wanted, and in order to prove how much I truly loved and cared I did it hoping the love would be reciprocated. Well, it didn't. I never did and it never will like that because that wasn't the truest form of love. It was muddied and defiled but life experiences, pain, rejection, and culture.

The essence of my very being cried out for love. But what was it, really? And how could I find it? Would it ever find me?

In October of 2013 I lost my mother. A friend asked me if I was truly going to be okay. I remember telling her vividly that I was truly okay with my mother being in the arms of the Lord away from any more pain and suffering here on earth. But that the biggest hurdle that gripped my soul was, who's going to love me now?

I didn't know it then, but the loss of my mother's love changed the trajectory of my perspective of people, God, myself and yes, love.

This and two more bad relationships thrust me into the arms of my true love. I truly never saw it coming. And, yes it was more than I could have ever dreamed of. I ran into the arms of the one who truly loved me and I have been captivated, convicted, covered, and changed by this love ever since that day I collided with it. My true love was never in the form of a human. I missed it this whole time because I was truly looking in All of the wrong places and in the wrong forms.

Ladies, God IS Love. Please don't roll your eyes and sigh out of frustration because you didn't hear what you thought I was going to say. I'm not kidding when I say I've found real love. I melt in His presence. I can't hold back tears when describing or singing about how real, special, kind and comforting His love has been to me.

"Anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love." - 1 John 4:8

But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. - Romans 5:8

1 John 4:11-12

"Give all your worries and cares to God for He cares about you." - 1 Peter 5;7

"No power in the sky above or in the earth below- indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord." - Romans 8:39.