On loving correctly…

^“So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.”

-1 Philippians 9:11

Love has been bastardised by the media gods. Hollywood teaches us that a regular guy, if he loves you enough, might be able to propose in a rose-filled room with a gorgeous 360° view peeking in while you select from 7 equally perfect winking diamond rings…because you know, you’re his perfect girl and all. “This can’t be real!” we exclaim while watching and wishing as the screen diva twirls with joy on our telly. We turn off the TV and turn on our phones to see a Lagos Girl with a Basketball wife lifestyle on Instagram, celebrating her engagement in the middle of a rose-filled room with a gorgeous 360°…All of a sudden you begin to contemplate your entire existence, “Oh God, where did I err?!”

The movies give us an unrealistic love ideal which social media confirms. Now we can compare and contrast notes on relationships not only with our friends and neighbours, but with celebrities the world over! Never in the history of the world has love faced so much pressure. Before we can force our incoherent baby babble into cogent words, we gurgle along to the music of Disney fairytales promising us we’ll meet our princess at a ball or other grand party. By the time we are tots, our bed time stories involve princes and happily ever afters.

Girls AND boys are inundated with the idea that true love is an entitlement and one that comes with minimum effort.

By the time we are young adults, we are awash with a pervasive, material, indulgent and infatuating idea of love. We love love. We love to love, being in love, doing for love, dying for love. Loving love so much, it’s no wonder that our expectations are so lofty!

The scripture on ‘loving correctly’ in Philippians hit me hard, especially the call to, “Live a lover’s life.” Meaning to me that even before falling IN love, you ought to live a life that is full of love; love of yourself, love for others. This is the real preparation to fall in love because at the base of true love is godliness. And by godliness, I refer to the character of God, not to religion. A character that is full of love, mercy, empathy, interest in life outside yourself, thoughtfulness, care for the inane details of another’s life, thankfulness, sharing and so much more. That’s our model for love, not Insta or The Snap. One of my favourite attributes of God is ’Loving Kindness’. It’s not an often used word but it represents a beautiful concept.

Loving Kindness means expressing love through acts of kindness.

God lives a lover’s life. God daily acts with kindness, remembering to forget to count the hurts, He starts every day with new mercies as if yesterday never even happened. It’s a lot to ask of anyone but loving well means loving another person the way you love yourself. We love ourselves in spite of our many mistakes and innumerable flaws, judging ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions.

I heard something at church that struck me,

“You’re not ready for love if you don’t know how to share.”

And that’s sharing everything. Now, now put down those calculators. Sharing doesn’t mean splitting in half, because that can also lead to unfair returns. Sharing means equal sacrifice…even when it’s not equal contribution. And this is much more than money. Sharing everything, sharing time you’d rather be doing something else, sharing your attention, sharing your plans that you’d already stenciled on your heart. Sharing. It is honestly a frightening concept but love can’t blossom without it. Sharing is doing without counting the cost AND without resentment and passive aggression.

When I moved into a flat a couple of years ago, I complained to my sister that I felt as though I was carrying more responsibility for the bills incurred than my housemate. Anita asked me, “The things you bought, would you have bought them for yourself if you lived alone?” I had to admit that I would have. I needed a couch, speakers for my TV, dining chairs and so on. And as soon as I took my mind away from how much I had done for the house…I began to notice just how much my house mate had been doing while I was busy tallying my good deeds and preparing for canonization.

Too often we count the cost of loving forgetting so quickly that to love and to have that love returned is an unquantifiable gift in itself. We are often so ungrateful as soon as we find love, taking it as our entitlement for being good/beautiful/available and so on. Love is an invaluable and rare gift; just ask the billions of people in the world who do not have it. I feel like love for most people is a tag sport. You do one thing and record your score, and the other person does the same. Whenever you fall out, the score boards are compared. The reason you do something for another shouldn’t be to chalk a tick next to your name. We love freely from a bounty of love that was given to us without counting the cost. That’s what Philippians means by, ‘Living a lover’s life’. It’s a life mirrored on the sort of love God shows me…without counting the cost and constantly reminding me of just how much He’s done. “Are you up this morning Wendy, breathing, just saw you wiggle your toes?! Oho, that’s Me! Death took 34, 000, 000 yesterday night and I could have let him have you! You better not try any rubbish or you’ll be the 35, 000, 000^th tonight!” God doesn’t do that to us.

Yet we do that to each other everyday.

Seemingly unrelated but I read once that surrender is hard when you focus on what you have to surrender…instead of the one you are surrendering it for. It’s a similar thing with love, the focus should be on the person that draws the sacrifice out of you…not on the sacrifice itself. That sort of love has a mirroring effect because selflessness and kindness often call out the same in others. Instead of raving about the sort of love you want or deserve, I’m suggesting we model that love instead. Usually the other person* understands and responds in kind.

(*I am obviously talking about your garden variety human beings not your resident psychopaths or extras on Crime TV.)