To Love and To Be Loved

There are so many ways to communicate love. The book The Five Love Languages, by Gary Chapman drove that home to me many years ago when I was going through a phase of Love is....saying the words, "I love you." For some people or cultures, putting it in words can feel like learning a foreign tongue. It is awkward and way out of their comfort zone but in the meanwhile love is still being communicated. I was getting too focused on my primary (preferred) method and was missing those tender moments of affection others were trying to give to me. Isn't our walk with Christ simply learning to love as He loved. Sitting at His feet is the only way to really learn. Hurry sickness, aimless living, surviving the rat race...can be themes that rob us of the very moments that give us ultimate joy and fulfillment, loving others as ourselves. When Christ sent people out two at a time I thought that was sensible, until I heard a sermon that explained that could have also reflected the mentor and protege relationship. That is not only sensible, it's an idyllic training model. Who isn't out of their comfort zone when people ask you who you are and why you believe what you believe. When I came to the end of myself and finally cried out to God to forgive me for some horrendous sins , I was set free and had a lot of zeal without knowledge. Just like falling in love, it can be pretty obnoxious to be around folks who are in that altered state of euphoria. There is very little self awareness in those moments but it is clear to those who are eye witness' you are smitten and it's for real. However...time will tell if it's just infatuation or the lasting kind. I want my love for God and others He has given me to love be an outpouring of devotion as in the poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning How do I love thee let me count the ways."
How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.