Day 196 – Love On Purpose

Good day World,

It’s such a beautiful day today. The sun has been gone for some time, but today it came out early and it’s still sunny and cool. I went running and did some stretches at the park. I feel energized and alive today. Grateful…

A lot has happened since my last entry, but I don’t know if I want to write about the events of my life or go in another direction today. I’m feeling so inspired and grateful. The season of my life is changing, and although winter is upon us, it feels like the beginning of spring inside of me. I have been planting seeds for a while, working the soil, uprooting, picking out weeds, getting rid of the crops that don’t bloom…

Today is peaceful. I would like to tell you one thing that happened. Besides being the last day of my writing class yesterday and the first day of orientation for my new job, I came upon a realization about love. Love (or the lack thereof) has been the theme of most of my life. This past week, I reconnected with one of my exes, the one who inspired this blog, and we fell in and out of love again in the course of a week. It had always been that way with us, though. Up and down, love then hate from day to day… Most of our arguments had always come from the fact that he would ask me to rely on him, and then he wouldn’t keep his word on stuff. I, in turn, would abandon him at the drop of a hat. This past argument was no different. He lied about something and then I told him never to contact me again. I ended it with a bang by getting back at him for lying to me…

But I didn’t feel so glorious. And after the thrill of vindication had subsided, I checked in with my Spirit. She was not happy with the way we had handled things. And it dawned on me. This was a man who, at one point, I had wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I really did. And this was a man who had actually considered me to be the Love of his life. Why were we hurting each other so much? I realized that he had never meant me any harm. No, he didn’t know how to be vulnerable and trust and receive love, but he had wanted to know. He had wanted me to show him. But when the going got tough (or even slightly uncomfortable), I left him. Every single time. I had never seen my self as the leaver or the person who doesn’t notice when someone is giving their all. I had always thought that I was the abandoned and the one who was put on the shelf, but yesterday, I saw clearly how much I had hurt him. I left him.

I prayed for forgiveness, and I asked him for forgiveness, and I am sitting here today analyzing this Love thing that we always talk about. What does it really mean? Besides having all of these feelings, how does love manifest in our actions? We have been saying I love you to each other, but what that has meant is, “I will only answer your phone calls when I feel like it, and I might not listen when you talk. When I get angry or scared, I will try my best to tear you down or I will leave you anytime you do a thing I don’t like. I might cheat on you and put your body at risk if I get bored enough. Oh, and you better act right, ‘cus if you make me mad, I won’t help you when you need it. I will get in the way of your greatest dreams, and I will only see you in relationship to what you can do for me. I won’t notice your laugh or your smile or anything about you unless it serves me. I won’t notice you dying…”

I have been the culprit and the victim of these “acts of love”, but life has changed. Just like that. Just like it always does. In a day. I realize that Love is an action word. It’s an on purpose word. It is an intentional caring and forgiving and noticing and supporting. It is an on purpose loyalty and receptivity, and sometimes it will stretch you and test your patience. Sometimes it will take everything out of you just to stay, or just to leave when you realize that there is no love in the thing you thought you loved…

Most of the time we don’t mean it. We don’t mean to hurt each other so much. We just don’t have a clue. But today, on this intentional adventure that we are taking, I’d like to put something in the air. We can Love on purpose. I mean, we can meet a person and get to know them first. Sure, chemistry and unknown forces are going to do their thing as far as attraction goes, but after that, we can choose who we want to Love, and we can choose qualified people, people who are willing and able to love us back. And we can become qualified people. We can actually notice the guy who brings us flowers and appreciate that simple act of love. We can answer a phone call even when we know that all they want to do is talk about themselves. And we can actually listen. We can take the time to be clear about how we feel and what that actually means in terms of action before we say I Love you…

I don’t know about you, but this dysfunctional relationship stuff is yesterday’s business now. I am ready for Love now, God, and I’m not even sad about it. Thank you so much…

Day 196

Love On Purpose