True Love

All of us have people or relationships in our life that seem to always be a struggle, right? Often times, unfortunately, it’s someone in our family or someone who we can’t completely severe ties with for various reasons. Maybe you’ve always butted heads with a parent or with one of your children. We can still love them and care for them, but for whatever reason we just don’t seem to be able to see eye to eye on many things.
Lately, I’ve been really struggling with forgiveness and fairness. And so it probably shouldn’t surprise me that I’m also struggling with anxiety and depression. In many ways, I think those things go hand in hand. And especially when it comes to a tumultuous relationship and not being able to deal with issues or work things out well, that anxiety seems to just sky-rocket.
The symptoms of anxiety and depression so often have turmoil beneath them. And often times we attempt to treat the symptoms without figuring out what the root cause of them is. And I’ve found that I’m not always great at dealing with the root cause of my symptoms.
And so, last week I wrote about the HEART test which helps us analyze some of the root causes for where we are at emotionally and spiritually. I think that’s a great tool to help figure out what might be causing some of our pain. However we also need to take steps that will help resolve the root cause of those symptoms.
There’s a song from the original Frozen movie called ‘Fixer Upper’. In that song the trolls tell us ‘you can fix this fixer upper with a little bit of love.’ And that’s not exactly true, but the song concludes well by saying, “We’re not saying you can change him, ’cause people don’t really change. We’re only saying that love’s a force that’s powerful and strange. People make bad choices if they’re mad or scared or stressed. But throw a little love their way and you’ll bring out their best! True love brings out the best!”
Peter writes in 1 Peter 4.8 something very simple yet poignant for us to remember when it comes to relationships. He writes, “Above everything, love one another earnestly, because love covers over many sins.” (GNT) The love he’s talking about is love that is patient, kind, not arrogant and rude, that bears all things and endures all things. That type of love will cover sin. And not just the sin we’ve committed, which is great, it can cover over the sins others commit against us, too. It is that type of love that helps us to forgive and helps us to relieve some anxiety. I pray we can find ways to throw true love people’s way and not only bring out their best but our best as well. God bless.