Does Love Cover....THAT?

Have you ever wondered what love is? Was there ever a time when someone told you they loved you in one breath and hurt you in the very next? Did you ever say to yourself, “If that is what love is I don’t want it”? Well Beloved, welcome to the club. I think we have all wondered at some time or another if what we felt, saw, and heard was love. How we perceive love has a significant impact on how we see ourselves and each other. Love for many of us has been a phenomenal experience while for others it has been a devastating experience. The question for all of us is, how have our love experiences, shaped who we are?

We hear all kinds of clichés like “love conquers all” and “love hurts” and yet we are still drawn to love and to be loved. Women dream about falling in love with Prince Charming, getting married, having little royal children, and living in a palace. Men dream of falling in love with a Playboy Bunny who will be the perfect wife, mother, and friend. Reality eventually sets in and we may find that we have married someone who is broke, busted, disgusted, and can’t be trusted. Amazingly, we see that and still make it up in our hearts and minds that our eyes are playing tricks on us and love will make the sad truth into a protected lie. Where do we get these ideas that love is like the ointment on a boo-boo that makes everything better? I often wondered about my own understanding of love and how I came to that realization. Was it something I learned from my parents, did the church teach me that, was I romanticized by the television?

The truth is I learned about love from all of them, but more than that I learned through my own love experience. Falling in love for the first time or so I thought when I was 12, falling in love the second time when I was 13, falling in love again at 16, and again at 19, and again at 23. All of my love experiences have taught me a little more about love because each one built upon the other and eventually, I had a misguided understanding of what love was and who I was.

I got so caught up in who I thought I should be that I lost me in the process. If I thought he wanted someone prettier, I tried that. If I thought he wanted someone smarter, I tried that. If I thought he wanted someone sexier, I tried that. I never even considered being myself. For me love meant being whoever the other person wanted me to be. It meant self-sacrifice, giving up my needs to please them. Love meant as long as you have what you need, I can go without. It wasn’t until my heart had been crushed beyond recognition that I realized that the phrase, “Love hurts” was a lie. The truth is love does not hurt, people do. I had a life-altering love experience that forced me to take a serious look at love.

I was drowning in my own pain, yet I functioned so well that no one knew. I was consumed with emotions that I blindly held hostage. I cried about it and attempted to forgive myself for even bringing it up. I beat myself up for feeling. I thought that my understanding of love was enough to keep me because I was still smiling, still saying, “I’m too blessed to be stressed”, and still believing in love. For me, love was all about action, my action and it did not matter if I was getting the opposite of love in return. For me love covered insensitivity, lack of concern for my feelings, cheating, hurtful words, and even intentionally inflicted pain. I had made it up in my mind that love was like grace, it was brand new every morning and every non- loving experience demanded: “love grace”. I believed that just like grace, love changed people and things.

What I did not realize is grace was a supernatural extension of love and my love was limited. On the surface love was covering but underneath my smile was bitterness eating away at who I was. My smile said love covers while my heart was saying love sucks. My actions were saying love covers, while my heart was saying, “I will never let you hurt me like that again”. I finally realized that I was not only lying to myself but slowly killing myself too. I was drowning and the truth was my lifeline. I had acculturated so well into the lie about love that I learned to mask my pain and camouflage my hurt with fake language, fake behavior, and denial. I was taught that acknowledging my pain and feeling my hurt was a lack of faith but acting like everything was fine was my burden to bear.

Now that I had this revelation, I had to face the truth that I was lying to myself. It was impossible for me to be honest when I was living a lie. I looked the part, dressed the part, and sounded like the part and the whole time I was not the part. So now what? The truth is staring me in the face, I’m broken, my pain has consumed me and I lost my hope in love. How do I see myself now and how do I see others. Surely, I know I have loved and I have been loved, right? What about you, what do you believe about love? Is love a verb or a noun? If you fall in love does that mean you can fall out of love? Is there a difference between being in love and falling in love? Is there such a thing as love at first sight? Does true love really last forever? Does Love Cover Everything?

All of these questions have led to me to this point in my life, 48 and single again. I have learned some valuable lessons about how to recover from a painful love experience. There are some basic things that I believe may help you recover from a painful love experience and hopefully restore your faith in love. We are talking about the human capacity to love each other and how negative love experiences affect our lives. Have you ever encountered someone who seemed unlovable? I mean the very thing that hurt you the most they took pleasure in doing and/or saying? It’s like they lived to make you miserable. The more you give the more they take. The more you love the more they hate. You try your best to love the H-E-L-L out of them and still the devil resides in them. What do you do? How do you authentically love folk that you want to slap on a regular? What if they still have the ability to push you to a place where you lose hope? Well, Beloved I am suggesting that it is not them it’s you.

Yes, I said it it’s not them it’s you. I’m going to share with you what I have learned about the healing process by using the good that is already on the inside of you. I am going to show you how to cultivate the good in you in such a way that no one can take your ability to love, your desire to love, or your capacity to love. I am inviting you on a journey to find your treasure, LOVE…..