Whatever happened to love?

As many have had to hear before I can rant for a very long time about love and especially the word love. My biggest issue is the over use of the word love. We say we love everything and everyone; we love anything from a starbucks coffee, to a new shirt, to some cute animal. We have become desensitized to what that word means what power it holds. No wonder we have no problem saying I love you to the first boy who holds our hand. And it is no wonder that we have no problem just transferring that love around, I mean love never seems to last that long anymore. People are too distracted and there are too many shiny new toys out there to "love" to stick to anything for too long. When something breaks or someone lets us down we have no problem just shrugging it off and taking our love back. There are girls with broken hearts everywhere I look because they gave themselves away for "love" that didn't last.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Whatever happened to love like this? To loving someone with everything you have? To loving until death, until it hurts to even think about letting them go because they have become a part of whom you are and where you see yourself going. Whatever happened to being allowed to admit that this is the kind of love you want, that I want. Whatever happened to romance? Where did we decide that romance had died, and let lust replace it? Some days I look at the world and I am just sad, I wish that the people of the world and the church would claim this love as their own, realize they have a father on heaven who loves them so much more than these words and they deserve amazing love on worth and to not sell themselves short.

We have fully turned love into an emotion which it was never meant to be. Infatuation, lust and 'like' are emotions but love is a deep seeded truth.

love (noun): a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.

                   Christianity: God's benevolent attitude towards man

                                     man's attitude of reverent devotion towards God

When I went on dictionary.com these were just two of the many definitions I found about love. Love and Christianity are still linked within the secular world, which says something about what Christians are supposed to stand for.

I have come to the realization that as Christians we have such a hard time maintaining any kind of loving relationship with God long term because we have lost what love really means. What it means to choose to love over letting the emotion take us where it may. We have allowed the world’s definition of what love is to become our definition of love and then we wonder why we are so unsatisfied.

As I fall more in love with God every day I realize that I have never known what it was to love God and receive his love up until a month ago. I was living with the worlds definition of love, letting my emotions take me and being satisfied but not living in the over flowing abundance of what God's love really is. Until we learn what love really is we are never going to be able to receive love? Until we learn to love ourselves we can't expect to be able to receive love. If we don't think we are worthy of love then we are never going to be living in the love of our Father.

And when I think about love I also think about the love I desire here on earth. I realize that there is a lot in myself that I need to work on to truly showing how I love others but I have also realized that I have sold myself short. I don't want to compromise my desires or dreams around another person. I want them to fit into my dreams. And although I am more than willing to change my dreams for them, I am not willing to let go of what God has put into my heart. They have to work around God's will, not God working around my will.