Love. What does it look like? What is it? Dictionary.com states that
love is: a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
The dictionary on my computer states it as :an intense feeling of deep
affection. The bible states that love is: patient, kind, not envious, not proud, rejoices in truth, never failing (1Cor13:4-7). 
But what does that all mean? What does it look like in the day-to-day walk? What does Love look like to the young? To the old? How do we know that we are loved? Is it in the way that we are treated? In the way that we are looked at? How about what people say? In a world filled with so much negative, how do we find Love? How do we feel it? How do we KNOW that we are loved?
Now I know that my parents, my friends, the Lord all love me. But I don’t know if I know even what love is. Yeah I know its a deep liking for someone. It is caring for them like Christ did. Its a “I don’t care what your past is, or even your present, I’m here for you” attitude. But lately I have been struggling to know what that looks like to me personally. What does it look like for me to love others and more importantly for others to love me. Do they even? It’s a question that often goes thru my head and heart lately. I know it has to do with my past being hurt by those who I thought loved me. And maybe they did but they didn’t act like it. What does it take for a person to feel loved again after being hurt and building up walls?
I have never had a problem with loving others. I have always been a servant and someone who puts others first before herself. I can remember how easy it was to love my kids last year in Jeffrey’s Bay. So many days I would sit holding on to the little ones who did not know what love was and give it to them. It was so easy and came so naturally. All I had to do was spend time with them. I know that by even just learning their names they felt loved. They knew then how special they are. And most of them had a home life that told them the complete opposite. It was my call last year to make sure those kids felt loved. Even if it was just for the afternoon when I was holding and playing with them.
In the back of my head while I am writing this is one word that my leader Chris kept telling us last year. INTIMACY. He always said that everything usually go back to intimacy with the Lord. Spending time with the Lord makes everything clearer. It straightens up messes. It is that time when it is just you and Him. A time when you are just you and Him.
This may not make sense to you but it is something that I have been struggling with lately. I am finding as I grow in the Lord and just in life. The I know less and less. That things I thought I knew I don’t. This is jsut one of them. I thought I would share.
Good thoughts. It really makes you ponder, and it made me think how much time have I been spending with the Lord. Am I investing in that intimacy?
Thanks for sharing this…I can agree with you that love is hard to grasp hold of. God is still teaching me about His love. I think that it is neat that when He created the world that He spoke everything into existence although when He created Adam and Eve He formed them with His own two hands…He molded them into His image. What sticks out to me is that He made the woman lastwomen thrive on relationships…God has instilled this into us…we want affection, love, and to be fought for….but God wants the same from us towards Him. He wants all of us….He is a jealous God and doesn’t want us to have an affair on Him with the world…He wants to be intimate with us. I believe if we can grasp hold of God’s unfailing love then we can be more open with Him and help others too. 🙂
Becca, I enjoyed your blog and the thoughts that you are wrestling with. The biggest thing that I see is that we have so many definitions or uses for the word “love.” How can we use the same word to describe t.v. shows, favorite foods, significant others, hobbies, and our friends?
In my mind, there are two types of love
1) Natural- This type of love comes from deep inside of you and reveals a lot about how God created you. the best example of this is your stories about loving on children in Swazi.
2) Choice- this is the more difficult type of love and reveals your character as well as Christ’s work in you. An example of this is when someone constantly wears you out or pushes your buttons. Or when your holding one of the children and they pee all over you or rip out a chunk of your hair. At that point you have to make a conscious choice to love them and show them the the love that Christ has so richly shown us.