I am loved.

Yes, I am loved. It is wonderful to be loved...by those we love. But what if we are not loved by those we love. That is difficult. As humans, I think that is our deepest need....to be loved totally and unconditionally.

I have been thinking about the realities of love, the expectations, the consequences, the ideals of love. What makes us love in the first place? Do we love only to be loved in return? Is there another kind of love worth looking into; the kind that gives and asks nothing in return? I've been thinking about that kind of love mostly. I know that when God was not at the main part of my inner being, my love, to be honest, was selfish, and egocentric and strangling. It had selfish motives to be loved in return. It desired to be noticed for all I was putting into it. It allowed me to see nothing but......ME.

Time has a way of allowing us to change. Loving others without expecting anything in return, has become just a part of who I am and certainly not because I have done anything to get this happening. No. That does not happen with our own feeble attempts at love.

As my life has progressed, as I have allowed more and more of it to be scrutinized and refined and chiseled away at, the more I realize it is God who is doing the cleansing, the refining and the changing. And all because he loves me. That type of refining is beginning to allow me to love without boundaries, without expectations....just to love others because that is what God desires us to do and because people are worthy of being loved. I don't have much fear in loving others. I do not totally fear their rejection. I'm learning. I'm learning to listen and not to have to speak. I am learning. I will continue to learn. I fail too, that I know. I disappoint people. I mess up. I'm hypocritical at times....but I'm learning.

I've been reading a book entitled, "The Inner Voice of Love" by the late Henri Nouwen. It is his "secret journal", as he describes it, in which he daily writes of his anguish and despair during the most difficult days of his life. It was not intended for anyone, ever, to read these words but after several years he was encouraged to offer his thoughts to his writing public.

In one section he writes about "Know Yourself as Truly Loved".

"Some people have lived such oppressed lives that their true selves have become completely unreachable to them. They need help to break through their oppression. Their power to free themselves has to be at least as strong as the power that keeps them down. Sometimes they need permission to explode: to let out their deepest emotions and to shake off the alien forces. ..........You, however, do not seem to need such explosion. For you, the problem is not to get something OUT of your system but to take something IN that deepens and strengthens your sense of your goodness and allows your anguish to be embraced by love.

"You will discover that the more love you can take in and hold on to, the less fearful you will become. You will speak more simply, more directly, and more freely about what is important to you, without fear of other people's reactions. You will also use fewer words, trusting that you communicate your true self even when you do not speak much.

The disciples of Jesus had a real sense of his loving presence as they went out to preach. They had seen him, eaten with him, and spoken with him after his resurrection. They had come to live a deep connectedness with him and drew from that connectedness the strength to speak out with simplicity and directness, unafraid of being misunderstood or rejected."

Oh God, I pray that this would happen for my friends who struggle with knowing whether or not they are loved.

I pray that for me too, that I would live with that "deep connectedness" to Christ....moment by moment.