9.17.2009

And The Walls Come Crashing Down...

Love.

It happens to be the one thing we are supposed to posses, if we have nothing else. We were created in the image and likeness of God, and God's very nature is love. So we are to be love. Jesus himself said the first commandment is to love the Lord, God, with all our heart all our mind and all our soul AND to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Here in lies the dilemma most of us have - we do not love ourselves.

Many times I sit back and I think about this whole loving idea of loving yourself, and I wonder why its so easy for some and harder for others. Where did it all go wrong? What happened in my childhood that got me all twisted in my perception of what love is supposed to be? Why is it that even with the perfect example of what love is, why does it not take root in my mind that it is also for me?

Maybe its because in my short 23 years of life (well in a few more days it will be anyway) I have managed to build up walls and detach myself from feeling certain things. Many around me do not understand and they say, "wow you are so chill, I wish I could be more like you." Funny how the grass always seems to be greener on the other side. If they really understood that this nonchalantness (is that even a word?) that I possess is only from years of pain. When you expect people to love you the way you WANT them to love you and you experience broken promise after broken promise, piled on top of rape and molestation, there is a sort of emotional numbness that takes over - at least that's how it was for me.

At a certain point I was so through with trying to deal with this thing, I just pushed it to the back of my mind. There were more important things to concern myself with, I had no time for irrelevant things like how I felt. All the while searching for love. It is a part of my genetic make-up. I am a child of God who IS love and I'm supposed to look just like him, so when the world was busy stripping me and beating me to the point where I had lost my identity, the walls went up and the mask went on.

People are so funny. We can smile and go through the motions of life and no one would ever know anything was wrong. All the while be dying on the inside, slowly. Each day another piece whithers away. The crazy thing is even Christians go through this. Why? A lack of complete submission to God. To serve and obey God is a choice. This is why we were created with free will. Many will give their body to God, and even their mind, but when it comes to the heart, we don't want to give that to God. To give him our heart means we have to let him deal with those things that we have blocked off and guarded away in the deep chest of emotional, whatever.

Last night I had to make a choice. I could continue down the path I was going expecting things to change (insanity) OR I could choose to give God my whole heart, not just a piece of it, but the entire thing. I wrestled with it for a moment, but I had to be real with myself. How can you truly love someone but you won't give them your heart. When you are in a relationship bound for marriage, you expect that person to give you their heart and you are supposed to trust them with your heart. We are supposed to be married to God. Would you really marry someone who you couldn't trust with your heart? Can you really say you love someone if you won't ever allow them to get behind those walls?

Last night I asked God to tear down my walls. I will never be able to fulfill the commandments if I'm never able to love. I plan on being married someday, and a marriage is supposed to be a reflection on earth of the spiritual relationship you have with God. How can I love a husband if I can't love the God who created him to begin with? What happens in the natural is simply a manifestation of whats going on in the spiritual realm, so if my spiritual relationship with God is not right, guess what is going to happen to my marriage when it comes? Exactly! To avoid all this, but more importantly to be able to regain my identity and reconcile the most important relationship I will ever have ( the one between myself and the Father) I asked God to bulldoze the walls and give me a new heart so that I can love again.

Love.