First of all, this post has been inspired by Bob Goff and his book “Love Does”. If you haven’t read it, I’ll wait while you go add it to your Amazon shopping cart. Do it. It can be an open window of fresh air to our musty, arid, dry faith if you let it.
This book is almost a memoir as Mr. Goff recalls several of his life events to explain how God’s love has been exemplified to him in tiny lessons along the way. Tiny lessons that have culminated into one big life lesson which involves the L word. Love. Love isn’t about winning arguments, being stronger, louder, faster, or bigger… love isn’t about loving so you can feel warm feelys in return. Love isn’t just saying three little words or having intentions.. love is all about actually doing.
Love is about putting down your phones, your propaganda, and your motives and actually caring.
Recently I had a friend reach out to me from middle school. She was my rock in 8th grade. We were tomboys who didn’t fit into the stereotypical middle school girl roll. You know, the one tries their hardest to shave their legs perfectly and curl their hair for an hour before the school bell rang. Nope. We were out playing football with her brother and his friends, getting muddy and TPing every house on the block.
But let’s back up a year.
In 7th grade I wanted to be popular so extremely bad. I compromised my character to impress just about everyone, including my parents and teachers. I wanted to be praised and adored for my use of name brand clothing and black mascara (my mom only allowed me to wear clear… I thought I was SUCH a rebel!). I had the biggest head I have ever held during that particular time and ruined several great potential friendships because of it.
This girl was one of those people God put into my life that reminded me that real friendships were what mattered, not what brand my shoes were. She pushed me in so many ways, my faith being one of them. Not because she believed what I did, but because she believed the complete opposite.
Our culture has become so focused on winning and not about loving.
Her and I desperately wanted to know truth. Whether it was found in Jesus Christ’s teaching or Joseph Smith’s writing, we desperately cried out to find it. Charts were drawn in our notebooks, verses were read from our scriptures, and sometimes our voices got a tad loud. But we still came back to that place of grace. That place of “hey you don’t agree with me at all, but I still love you”. It has become one of those memories I go back to when people start pulling out labels and attaching them to people instead of soup cans. It reminds me that we don’t always have to agree in order to love. In fact, sometimes truly loving is just that.
After that year, my testimony will tell you that was one year my big head was starting to deflate, only to inflate even more bigger the next year. Pride does that to us. It kills relationships. It killed our’s.
“I used to think I could shape the circumstances around me but now I know Jesus uses circumstances to shape me.” -B.G.
Looking back at that time, that was my way of realizing this had it had to be my faith. Not my pastor or my parent’s, mine. I had to own it not just coast off the faith of other’s. “We need to make our faith our very own love story.” -B.G.
When I woke up the other day I had a message sitting in my inbox etched in humility and venerability, two characteristics my friend often was in 8th grade. She was full of apology for how she had acted in 8th grade with her voice, tone and temper and while I knew our voices had raised above the normal tone a few times, I knew deep down she had cared about me.
You see Maya Angelou was right when she said “I’ve learned people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
What are you obsessed with? What are you hoping people say about you when they leave your presence? Or are you too worried about winning the argument? Or gaining the affection of others?
“When people realize there’s no agenda other than friendship and better understanding, it changes things.” -B.G.
Loving isn’t about you, it’s about them.
Loving isn’t about me. It’s about we.
I am not saying you have to agree with people in order to love them well.
Love hopes all things…
What can you do to inspire this kind of hope, this kind of love, today? I’ll give you a hint: it starts by doing. Doing even if you don’t have a plan. That’s okay. Do it anyway. Love, after all, does.
