Love Through a New Perspective (A Post for Five Minute Friday)

You are reading Reflections of a Survivor, in which I share my family’s escape and healing from spiritual abuse.
Other portions may be found here. May this story inform, inspire and motivate.

 Circumstances change perspective. Perspective changes meaning. When our circumstances change, our perspective changes. As perspective changes your interpretation of a person’s words or actions, so can it change your interpretation of words.

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. . .” – from 1 Corinthians 13

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Love, it’s another foul ball causing me to raise my hands over my heads. I duck a little, but quickly raise my head in confidence. Love never fails and it should not be run from. In fact, if I believe 1 John, it must be embraced. “For he who does not love does not know God. For God is love.”

In this period of reclaiming, I change my perspective.  I look at love from a different angle. Why can love be frightening? Sinful people let you down. And we’re all sinful, aren’t we?

What I thought was love let me down. I see that love from a different perspective now.  It smothered me, condemned me, and controlled me. It tested me and pushed me. It was selfish and draining

If we do not love, we hate. John made it as simple as that, didn’t he?

Change your perspective.

Just take the verses above and read them in the opposite. That is hate. That is what someone called love.

I was wrapped in friendship, community, family and what I thought was safety. I was told I was loved, but beneath the surface I found envy, arrogance, irritability, resentfulness, lies and pride. In the end, I discovered what so many people mistake for love… lust.

That is frightening.

It is frightening enough to scare a girl away from love. It did, for a while. God is love, however, and I want God. I want him so much I can feel it in my bones when I start to slip away. Thus, I want love.

I want love.

Therefore, I reclaim it. Praise God for friends, whom I already trusted, and family that would not let me go. They loved me like 1 Corinthians 13. They were patient and kind.

I love.

I ask God to use me, hands and feet, to serve his children. I stumble and I remain on my knees long enough to ask the Lord to love through me.

I go deeper, choosing a Biblical perspective.

I am so thankful to have found the Hello Mornings group. Many of us are studying 1 Corinthians 13 through the Love Like Him study or Focus 15. It is not a mistake that this chapter was chosen just as I joined the group. I know it is by divine design and I rejoice in the Lord’s providence.

He knows what I need! For, it is not I who is doing this reclaiming, but Christ in me!

What have you had to reclaim? How has God provided for you to do that?

Has changing your perspective allowed you to reclaim?