Loving From a Place of Brokenness

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” — 1 Peter 4:8

Last week at my church group meeting, we were asking ourselves the question, “who do we feel unconditionally loved by?” My parents immediately came to mind, but that’s an easy answer. Then I talked about my best friend’s love for me and how she has always made me feel more loved and accepted than anybody else.

However, when two of my peers answered the question, they both had a lot more trouble than me. Instead of answering who makes them feel loved, they proceeded to talk about how unloving and conditional their family’s love for them makes them feel.

One thing I’ve come to understand is that someone’s love for us and our perception of their love for us are often times vastly different. From love languages to attachment styles, it is very difficult for human beings to express their love to another in a way that makes the other person feel loved.

One woman in my group wants her family to love her the way the Bible describes in 1 Corinthians 13:4–8, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

First, let me clarify that I think many people mistake unconditional love and mature love.

Unconditional love means exactly what it sounds like — it is a love without conditions. It means, “I will love you no matter what you do, who you are, or whether you love me back.” Unconditional love is purely based on the person giving the love, and has little to nothing to do with the person receiving the love. It’s an incredibly difficult kind of love to live out.

Mature love and conditional love go hand in hand, but the main difference is that mature love is based on how well you love others. Mature love reflects the growth of a person or relationship. Instead of saying, “I will love you no matter what,” it says, “This is how I will show you my love to the best of my ability, but sometimes that ability won’t be good enough.” Mature love doesn’t measure how much love is given, but rather how much and in what ways love can be shown.

John Amodeo Ph.D., MFT, had some great thoughts about this in his article, “Is Unconditional Love Really Possible?” He says that though we need unconditional love, mature love puts healthy boundaries on how that love is shown.

I compare it to the difference between a child’s love for a parent versus an adult’s love for their partner. Children can love unconditionally, but they learn to love maturely as they grow, and this is a lesson that takes some far longer than others. For a child, they love their parents no matter what their parents do, whether they are neglected or cared for. When it is time to love a partner, they will love from either their own brokenness or the healthy love they received.

Amodeo says, “For better or worse, mature love can only thrive under certain conditions… we cannot expect love to thrive under sterile or hostile conditions. There needs to be (enough) mutuality.” He goes on to make what I think is a very good list of what mature love looks like:

“Loving doesn’t mean always supplying what another person wants, being tirelessly accepting, and having no needs of our own. An immature view of love saddles us with the obligation to satisfy every need, soothe every sorrow, and comply with every request.”
“Loving means being sensitive to the space between ourselves and others — being respectful, attentive, and attuned to each other’s feelings and wants.”
“Love asks us to take another’s requests seriously and to make them happy, if we can do so without harming ourselves.”
“Love cannot mean that our partner must deny their desires in order to accommodate us. Nor can it mean suppressing our own longings in order to wear the spiritual badge of honor of being unconditionally loving.”
“Love cannot thrive without courageous self-awareness and rigorous self-honesty.”

With these definitions in mind, here is how our immature love falls short of the Biblical definition of love, but is still love. A mature love understands that everyone can love from a place of brokenness, and that it doesn’t diminish their love.

People do fail in the way they love us. They do it all the time, some in worse ways than others. No one can love perfectly. That’s part of being human. But we often fail to acknowledge the way we fail ourselves and others. We don’t love ourselves enough to set boundaries or express our needs. We love immaturely by not being able to accept others, despite still wanting them in our lives.

Just because we love imperfectly doesn’t mean we love any less.

Love is so complicated and there are few who know how to do it right, and none that know how to do it right all the time. When I think of my parents’ unconditional love for me, I feel lucky not only because they love me in such a supportive and accepting way, but also because I believe this is the way they love me. Often times it’s our own broken perception that gets in the way.

Love doesn’t say, “I will never fail you or make any mistakes.” It says, “Despite all my mistakes and the ways that I fail you, I still love you.”

Sources:
What Loves Does
God’s Unconditional Love
“Is Unconditional Love Really Possible?”

5 Ways We Screw Up Unconditional Love

Originally published at http://www.tryingtogainperspective.com.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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