Love & Support

Definitions of support (as a verb):
- to provide the necessities of life for
- to give aid or courage to
- to give approval to
- to endure with forbearance
- to give strength to, maintain
- to bear or hold up, serve as a foundation for
- to sustain or withstand without giving way, serve as a prop for
- to undergo or endure, especially with patience or submission; tolerate

Lately, God has really had the word support on my heart. I believe He's teaching me what it means to be unconditionally supportive of the people I love. After my breakup, I started praying that God would teach me what it means to truly love someone; and not strictly limited to a dating relationship, either. I want to learn how to see and love people unconditionally, as God does--the way I'm called to. I think that so often we interpret "love your neighbor as yourself" as "just be nice to everyone." I think we tend to consider this particular command to look more like passive tolerance than active love.

God used the word love here for a reason. If He wanted us to simply "be nice" to one another, He would have said just that. But He took it a step further. "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love and tolerance are entirely different concepts.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, 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. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." - 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NIV)

This is a pretty heavy definition, and it's how we are called to treat everyone. Not just our families, not just our significant others, not just our friends or the people we prefer to be around. Everyone. It's not easy; it's not supposed to be. If it was, we'd all be great at it.

People aren't easy to love, yet we're called to love all of them all the time. Love isn't just a feeling or an emotion, it's a mindset. A lifestyle. And the only way to do even a halfway decent job of loving others is to experience true love at it's source.

I'm starting to realize that before you can do a good job of loving any individual person, you must first learn how to love people in general. I used to think that being in love or doing a good job of loving someone would make you good at loving everybody else, but now I'm starting to think that it's the other way around. We have to understand what it means to love before we can effectively narrow it down.

So, to bring this full-circle, I really think that one of the core concepts of love is unconditional support. Helping, encouraging, affirming, and offering strength. It's such an enormous part of any and every relationship. I don't think I'm doing a very good job of articulating my heart on this, but I think that's okay.

Basically, being unconditionally supportive of someone is one of the best, simplest, and most important ways you can love them. And that's just the beginning!