Starving for Love

I don’t know about y’all, but I am starving

Well, yes, I am hungry, as any grad student is, but I am not talking about food. I am talking about something we as a society are starved of.

Love.

As the times grow more and more hectic, we are all growing more and more exhausted for love.

It seems as though each person is living in a daze, constantly searching for some missing piece of themselves. We are all highly aware of the empty holes in our chest, and if we seek for some quick plug to throw in with scotch tape, hoping that that will fix the problem.

And as we attempt to understand the missing parts of our soul, we completely miss the point.

Love is not a compartmentalized substance that can only be found in one place.

Love is not just in the family

Love is not just in a relationship

Love is not something that can be defined in one simple image.

When we seek for love in one perfect image, relationship, or even a person, we start to lose sight of all the love that could be in the world. We think that maybe we should avoid people that do not fit our image because they might take away from our opportunity to be a part of the love that we are so desperate to find.

The fact is that we will never find the love we imagined

“We cannot decide to love. We cannot compel anyone to love us. There’s no secret recipe, only love itself. And we are at its mercy— there’s nothing we can do” 

~Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop

And most of all: we cannot assume that love is one entity. We cannot keep thinking that we are unloved because we are from a broken home, single, or only have two or three close friends. Love, while it is beautiful and perfect in nature, cannot be contained in a small box in the back of our minds.

Love should consume our lives

Love should be seen.

Is the way a man plays with a puppy not a simple form of love? Is not the music played by a skilled musician an act of love? Is the change we put in the hand of a homeless person not an image of love?

Love is simple.

Love is kind.

Because we ignore the little acts of love in the world, we no longer recognize love in our lives.

God does not wish this for us. 

You see... God is Love. He is everywhere and in everything. He knows everything about us and everyone around us. And as such, He too is starved for us to see Him. God, as love itself, is desperately calling out to us to tell us that we are loved and needed in this world. And unlike the emotions that we control our vision of love on, God can reveal Himself by His own power and mercy.

God completes this through others

“No one has ever seen God. Yet if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is brought to perfection in us.” ~1 John 4:12

I was starved for love and God used His gift of friendship to bring my vision of love back in to the world.

Here’s my story.

I came from a family filled with nothing but love. And as I grew older and moved out of the house, I took that love for granted. The simple acts of love that made my life possible were assumed to be normal family life. 

I am still shocked that I took my daily phone calls to my mommy for granted.

Because love was easy to find, I no longer saw it as God's love in my life.

You see, I started to only care about romantic love. I would love so many people in the simple ways, and yet I thought that this love was not really love. I thought it was just taking care of people, a chore, a bore. I thought that because the boy that I had the most love in the world for didn’t love me back that I would be unlovable for a long time.

Then I was forced to be loved by a new friend.

This friend did not know that he loved me at all. In fact, by my scope of love, he would not have even considered loving me, for his heart was already owned by someone else.

Still, he found a way to love me as a human being. He took the time to get to know me, to get me to talk, to get me to share my life with him. And as time passed, I started to accept his friendship. 

I started to accept the simple love he gave me for simply being a person.

A ripple effect on my life ensued

The longer I knew this boy, the more I started to see love outside of the romantic scope. I started to see the silent love of the humble servants surrounding me. I started to appreciate my phone calls home more. I started to see that love was something that could not be contained in compartments.

For the first time in months, I wasn't "hungry" anymore.

Because I was no longer starved for love, I was able to see where love was needed, a skill learned from my new friend. As a Christian, my friend saw the need for love that every person saved by Jesus Christ has the capability to use. 

It certainly was not easy, but he found a way to become a friend and influence my life in a way that he may never know about.

I am sure that I was not the kind of friend he would have made normally.

And yet he did anyways.

And through that act alone, my capability to love others returned.

It amazes me how people respond to the love that I can share as a friend. People are so starved for love that when I do something simple, like give them a compliment, they seem to be completely amazed. Sometimes boys even think I am interested in them because I bothered to get to know them...

It's not their fault: they just can't see love in a simple way anymore.

We cannot continue to keep changing the way that love is seen. If we keep ignoring the little signs of love in the world, the loneliness that has filled the world around us will only grow louder.

“Sometimes loneliness makes the loudest noise.” ~Aaron Ben-Ze’ev

We have to start taking the time to love other people as God intended. It is not easy to love people outside of our comfort zone. Being kind to those who make us uncomfortable, have different values, made mistakes, or simply do not know how to love very well…these are the ways that we can feed the starving souls that surround us.

Love is not all romantic or familial, but by being able to love others simply it may be possible for romantic and familial love to be recognized.

Mommy, I just wanted to thank you so much for loving me, even when I took it for granted. Team Newton, I could not be more blessed to be part of such a loving family. Y'all taught me what love looked like, and I am honored to be a member of the most amazing family I have ever known.

Dear Readers, I urge you to call your parents and tell them you love them. Then I urge you to think of a person that you could have loved better this week, and then maybe take the opportunity to let love grow a little more in this world.

And pray for me as I search for love in this world and attempt to bring it back.

I love you all.

God Bless.