Dare 11: Love is Unconditional

The funny thing is... sometimes I copy and paste pretty much from my last round and sometimes I write new ones... running behind (two weeks and a day behind to be exact) and thought I'd copy one real quick... First line of the one I was copying was... 

"My apologies for the late post."  

Haha... must be the time of year.  AND the fact that my mom and I are starting a photography business and whenever I get on the computer that seems to be all I'm thinking about.  Anyway... here we go :) Better late than never. 

Dare 11: Love is Unconditional  

 

This week's dare is about unconditional love.  Reading over the chapter in the book, it felt as though it didn't apply much to loving our students.  It dives into the different types of love (greek-- agape, phileo, eros)... and quite honestly, I would really need to dig into the meaning of those words deeper for me to feel okay with applying it to our love for our students.  
But, part of what I am coming to realize is just how hard it is for me to fully accept that God's love for me is unconditional, which means that it is even harder for me to grasp what it looks like for me to love unconditionally.  
I'm just going to quote what the last part of the chapter says here...
"When your enjoyment of each other as best friends [referring to a spouse here]...is based on unwavering commitment, you will experience an intimacy that cannot be achieved any other way.  But you will struggle and fail to attain this kind of marriage unless you allow God to begin growing His love within you.  Love that "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (1 Corinthians 13:7) does not come from within.  It can only come from God.  The Scriptures say that "neither death, nor life, nor angles, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39). This is God's kind of love.  And thankfully--by your choice--it can become your kind of love."

So, I think what I, personally, need to work on this week, is attempting to understand, beginning to comprehend just exactly what it means that God loves us unconditionally.   It is obviously the only way that I'm ever going to begin getting to love thing right.  I have to learn from the only one that does it perfectly... And I need to accept it for myself, so that I can truly give it to others.  It actually feels extremely overwhelming to even begin to think about it... 

So, i guess my dare for you this week is to go before God and ask Him to reveal His love to you in a way so clear that the only possible thing for you to do is to go share it with someone else... everyone else.  Its the only way we will ever learn to love our students the way God has called us to love them... 

And I'll be praying for you, too.  Praying that your hearts are open to receive love... praying that you would allow yourself to KNOW that you are worthy of His love... it may be really hard for some of us, but it will definitely be worth it...  



Must be a God thing, because I wrote all that a year ago... and just in the past week I've begun to struggle with the same thing again.  It is hard to accept that I will never fully understand God's love.  The perfectionist in me (however dwindling she may be) wants to get it. Right now.  And forever.  But that's just not the way it works.  I will forever be trying to comprehend the depth of God's love for me... 

Love you.