My own clean, unselfish love

Coming on mission, my goal was to love. Love these girls who do not feel a parents’ love. Take them in and love them for all that they are and all that they are not. Love them until it hurts (Waddup, Mama T?). Well I discovered that love is not always what you read about in the storybooks.

It would be great if all love was flowers and butterflies, but it really wouldn’t be worth having if it was just the same all the time. Coming here I thought it would be so easy to love these girls. They really need the love, right? Piece of cake. More like piece of an enormous jigsaw puzzle (...sorry, bad analogy).

Martha and I sharing such a tender moment
evident by the look on my face

I had my best lesson in love when it came to giving it without receiving it back. In the storybooks love is always mutual and so appreciated. I found out the hard way it is very, very difficult to love another person when they do not appreciate you or reciprocate the love. Luckily I had the wisdom of a previous SLM (Heyooo Jenna) to lean on. She reminded me that the soft, fuzzy love is not the reason we came on mission. We came on mission to be like Christ. Throughout his life, Jesus loved those who sinned against him, who spit in his face, and who led him to death on a cross. He LOVED them, crazy man that he is. This is the love that we are called to, not the stuff that makes us feel good inside at the end of the day (although that is certainly nice every now and again :) ). This has been and will continue to be my struggle throughout my mission—I mean, I scored a soft teddy bear on my confrontation analysis… of course this is going to be tough for me.

I’ve been reading some reflections by Thomas Merton recently (Still a big fan, Mr. Norman?). While reading, he had a quote that really struck me that inspired this post: “Clean, unselfish love does not live on what it gets but on what it gives. It increases by pouring itself out for others, grows by self-sacrifice, and becomes mighty by throwing itself away.”  This clean, unselfish love is what I need to strive for here in Bolivia with these girls and with everyone around me. And also reading this, I can’t help but think, “Jesus is such a master.” Talk about clean love, man.

Maria Greiser and I

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Kind of switching directions, I have had another personal struggle with love while being here on mission.

Love and I have a funny relationship. For some reason, I have grown with this notion that it is my sole responsibility to give love—that my relationships with other people depend on the love that I give to them.  Basically I put all the responsibility of the success of the relationship on my own shoulders… which, let me tell you, is really not a great place to be. If relationships fail, it is my fault. If I mess up in a relationship, it’s over because another person could not possibly be able to see beyond that mistake.  They say the best gift is to give, which is so true, but there’s a problem when you cannot accept the gift of love from another person.

I am not sure when it started, but this roadblock in my relationships has made it very hard for me to feel and even accept the love of another person. It is like I don’t see the capacity for other people to love me. I have never thought before that it is my responsibility to accept the love of another person.

Me and Emily

While I do believe I was called here on mission to give my love, as time goes on, I have found more and more that one of the biggest reasons God called on mission was to learn to accept that another person loves me fully and completely for who I am. Day after day I am greeted with a great “LEINI”, showered in hugs and kisses, and receive smiles and laughter filled with such joy. How could someone not find love here in this place?

One of my biggest difficulties in love was to accept the easiest love of all: the love of God. I always thought that I had to do good things in order to earn the love of God. But I have slowly discovered that Uh uhhh, I am doing good things because God loves me—C.S. Lewis helped me to this one.  HIS LOVES COMES FIRST. He loves ME. He longs for ME and for MY love. He is constantly seeking for ME… Of course he loves you too—That I never have had a problem accepting. God is working through the people in our lives to show his love for us. God has brought me here—thousands of miles away from the comforts of the people who, in my eyes, have to love me—to show me that he loves me too, gosh darnit, and he’s showering me in his love each and every day.

God loves better than anyone else! What better way to discover his love than during this Easter season? Jesus laid out alllllll the cards displaying his love for his people….and for me. This man had me in mind when he accepted death on the cross. Unbelievable, right?

So I’m on a journey to discover God’s clean, unselfish love for me. And to share that with other people. I am also working on realizing that his best way of showing his love for me is through his people, who just might have this clean, unselfish love for me as well. I apologize to anyone who has been caught in the crossfire of my internal battle. I really love you all.

Finishing this on the night of my 22^nd birthday, I have felt nothing but love all day long. Thank you to everyone who has made me feel special in every teeny-tiny way.

Sending my GREAT BIG LOVE from my humble hogar home,

Lain