Love covers all our flaws

Have you spent the last couple of years making concessions so you would fit in? A lot of us have. And while these circumstances were a trigger of fit-in behavior, we should take this opportunity to better understand why we gave in.

For what reasons, and for how long are we willing to dissolve ourselves and lose our own identities in order to be a ‘part’ of a world that does not love us? A world that will drop us if we fail?

The answer is: not too long until we become deeply frustrated, angry and bitter. And what will really haunt us is not our difficulty to forgive others, but to forgive ourselves as we live with the consequences of our own decisions knowing that we could have made better ones had we not given in to the fear of not fitting in.

We should all know by now that whenever we try to live by strict rules, we are bound to fail at some point. We are human, and thus we are inherently flawed. We are living the life that others expect us to live when we make an effort everyday to be the perfect people that we are not.

When we accept that we are not in control, and that we never were or ever will be, that frees us from living under unfair expectations and introduces us to the real life we never had before.

This real life is the one we are all called to live. And it is only when we surrender to Love that we start living it.

Because Love covers all our flaws.

And when we put Love first in life, and allow it to guide us, we do not experience regrets. With Love, life no longer feels like a countdown, because we know Love transcends space and time.

Love allows us to transcend the world and start living without fear, especially the fear of death that drives many of us to make hasty decisions thinking we are running out of time.

But so what if we are running out of time? Love makes a day feel like a year, and a year feel like a day. It gives us a conscience that is no longer bound by feelings of who we are not, or not being good enough, and takes us on a journey of who we were always meant to be.

With Love, we live what we can, how we can, when we can.

I had no trouble being myself in the last couple of years and lived a relatively normal life. And the secret is simple: I know how to be subtle about my different outlook in life. Instead of using these differences to confront others, I focus on similarities that can unite us.

Remember: we need to be patient with those who think differently.

We are not called to turn our differences into instruments of divisiveness. When we keep Love in the foreground of how we treat each other, these differences become secondary and often don’t even come up.

At the same time, we are also not called to be perfect, but to be loving. And to love each other regardless of our different choices in life, and our shortcomings.

When we live this way, we do not feel the need to fit in. Putting Love first in our lives gives us this confidence and allows us to enjoy the peace, joy and hope that come when we confidently know why we don’t fit in this world.

Love casts out all fear

The fear of a life with an unknown expiry date is soul crushing. Yet this isn’t the life we are called to live. We drown in fear because we don’t live in Love.

Our calling is to live in Love, and powerfully overcome death as we walk towards eternity.

Love keeps us strong. Even when everything and everyone around us collapses, we stand in peace and filled with hope.

When this divine Love inhabits us, we get a taste of the eternity it comes from and leads us to.

There is no medicine for our fear in this world. If we want to be healed of living in fear, we need to want this Love.

Because only Love casts out all fear.

Loving one another doesn’t always mean walking with one another

When we become a home to the one who’s all good, all love and all light, we start experiencing everything through the lens of this transcendental reality.

And this can be tricky. It isn’t uncommon for believers to fall into the many traps set by their ego and become pathologically good, which is not good.

As a new believer, navigating the word and applying it to this world was quite a challenge. I was going above and beyond for people who hadn’t earned my devotion. I was there for people who had severe difficulty to recognize the toxic effects of their actions in my life. I was apologizing to people who couldn’t apologize to me. I was giving my all to people for whom no good was ever good enough.

I never realized that I was making sacrifices. And even when I did realize that, I still didn’t understand that we’re called to show mercy, not to make sacrifices.

We can love our best friends, people who hate us and the Ted Bundys of this world all in one shot because loving one another is not about merit. But we are called to love one another, not to befriend or marry our abusers.

When it comes to selecting our life partner or close friends, they must earn our company. Our love. Our willingness to go above and beyond for them. Forgive and stay with them. Nobody is perfect, but having the humility to admit one’s mistakes and repenting from them is essential.

It is a simple principle in place from the one who gave us our precious lives. We deal with what we can’t avoid. But otherwise we choose what’s good.

How you can put grief into perspective with love

Death ceases to have a pervasive grasp on us when we know exactly where we came from and the beautiful home we’re heading to. We just have to let love lead us there.

As contradictory as it seems, fear of death is the very cause of a lot of the self-destruction that many people inflict on themselves – and it rubs off on others around them too. Without the certainty of eternal life, this life becomes all about self-indulgence and, needless to say, that always leads to emptiness.

I have personally experienced the hurtful side effects of someone choosing the path of self-destruction while grieving. I tried to support this person that I was close to, only to realize – a little too late – that there was really no amount of support that could possibly help someone without a spiritual life. Someone who decided to treat himself and others as if their lives were meaningless.

I was traumatized by this experience, and I know there are a lot of relationships out there being shattered because of grief. It is traumatic to be around someone who chooses to bury themselves with the dead instead of choosing to live and love the ones who are alive. And who love them.

The separation from a loved one is painful, but we must remind ourselves that it is only temporary. And if we live our lives under God’s grace, we will not fall into the destructive darkness of grief. His love will strengthen us with the ability to hope, heal and love ourselves and others.

While we might miss the absence of a loved one, the gracious response to it should be an overwhelming joy for the fact that our loved one is with God.

This joy proves that we have a genuine relationship with God. On the other hand, its absence proves that we haven’t really accepted God as the master of our lives and still live deeply attached to the deadly systems of this world.

Everyday we are called to live our lives in spirit and truth by the one who conquered death and saved us from it. All we have to do is follow him.