What is love exactly?
Is it a feeling or an action?
Maybe it is an emotion or maybe just a thought.
Whatever love it, whatever the dictionary definition is or what you may think of when you hear the word love it is something. Love is a word that we hear at least once a day either in the context of one person saying it to another or you will see it written somewhere. While we are familiar with the concept of "happy" love I don't think enough of us are familiar with the concept of "tough" love.
I think that any kid would argue that point and tell you that they are very familiar with the concept of tough love. I know that I felt that way growing up. Between the ages of 6 to 10 I thought that the whole world showed me "tough" love. I was positive that tough love meant that someone either didn't want to love me or that they found it difficult to love me. As I have grown, though, I have learned that the phrase tough love has a much deeper meaning.
I have personally learned that tough love is a feeling and an action. I learned that tough love is, after 7 years of loving someone so much, letting that person go and knowing that God has a better plan for your future and that He will cure the pain. I have learned that it is falling to my knees in prayer for a family member when I know that prayer is harder to do than going and fixing the situation. Through those moments I have come to better understand the love that God had to express towards His Son has he hung on the cross to die, and even the love that He sometimes has to express towards us, His children, when we wander away from him.
The truth about love is that, while yes it is a wonderful thing, it can also be a very hard thing. When you look at it from the perspective of how difficult this type of love will be to implement you will come to understand that this is also the love that has the potential to grow you and strengthen you. I am not saying that this is the love that we should implement in our daily interpersonal relationships, but instead it is the love that when it does come our way we should look for as many opportunities to help us grow and become more and more like Christ.
Love...
What is it?
It is an action and a feeling and an emotion and a thought.
It is also, so much more. It has the potential to make us a new person in Christ.
Love is a wonderful thing, even the love that is hard.
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