They just can’t. People do love you, but not a single one of them will love you like you want to be loved or feel like you need to be loved. No human has the capacity to love you or fill you completely the way you need.
We can start with our first understandings of love – mom and dad. They were these big, important almost *other* beings and they were in charge of your care physically and emotionally. Mom and Dad shape your ideas of what love means. So much is at play here, because Mom and Dad are these two imperfect humans with their own unique set of pros and cons. However great or difficult your childhood – you can always look back and see how you came upon the way you love others and the way you were loved – even how you love yourself.
Now we can move on to those in our environment outside our home. Our relatives, neighbors, friends and classmates all play a role in how we view ourselves in light of how we think they love us. Some love us and some don’t. We love others and don’t love a few as well as we should. We are human.
Society should accept us just as we are and love us no matter our differences. They don’t. No matter how hard we want the world to love everything about us they won’t. They can’t. It is impossible to please everyone. People see things in black and white and some in gray. No one sees in all gray. Not everyone’s black and white is the same either. There will always be people who love us and those that pretend not to see us in the grocery so they don’t have to speak to us. Sure, they don’t hate us – they just don’t really like us and we don’t like some of them. Society is out when it comes to total love and acceptance.
Boyfriends show up and we thought we knew what love was but then we met him. Sometimes they stay and sometimes they go. When they go and we didn’t want to be left, it does a major work on how loved we feel. We question whether we will be loved ever again. Or we stay – stay with someone who doesn’t love us well because we just don’t think we deserve any better. Again, how we view love shapes us and our decisions – downright how we live our lives.
Marriage is the ultimate in high expectations that are hard to meet – on both ends. This big wedding with the man of our dreams that we are so excited about being with – THE ONE – who was the perfect match for us will fill the love bucket. We will feel the most excellent emotions and feelings that will make us feel whole. That’s what we are supposed to feel when we get married, right – whole and complete? It’s supposed to feel that great always, too. Maybe this didn’t work for complete wholeness. Maybe it did for a while but once those butterflies flew away you start to wonder why the void is still there. Happily-ever-after turns into fine-ever-after. Possibly not-so-happily-ever-after. Wasn’t this supposed to be different? Weren’t we different from all the rest?
Ok, babies should do the trick. Babies will be the love you never knew and always needed. Man, they sure do find a brand-new way for you love. This way is unlike any other way. You never knew love like this. Here is the right and most wonderful and most fulfilling love you have every known. They get older and grow up right before you. You love these kids and they love you back. You have a bond like no one else. Some put their children on the top of the hierarchy of their family. Some decide to put them at the very bottom of everything. Either way, at some point it becomes clear that even though these children – however old they are – love you but then they grow up and find their own people and their own families to love. They can’t always be there when you need them – they live far away, they are deployed, they are going through some hard things in life and you just aren’t very close anymore. They love you, but they no longer can fill your void.
We get to a point, somewhere along the way, where we decide to either keep trying to earn this unfulfilled love through these people in our lives or we start chasing the only One who can love us and fill the void.
Expectations are the worst. When we expect things that aren’t in the realm of reality, we get crushed. When people don’t meet realistic expectations that crushes, too. People will disappoint but they also can love well, too. They just can’t completely fill us. We can’t completely fill anyone, either. So many do their best.
People who don’t heal from past wounding will react to their world through their hurt lenses. They usually don’t realize they are even doing this. It isn’t intentional. A person who has unresolved trauma and never received healing will have a hard time relating to others. They won’t be able to love as well as they could if they don’t heal themselves. How can they if they have a bleeding wound deep within? They do their best. Even if people get all the help for whatever they have been through, they still respond in their sets of understandings even though they may be very different from yours.
We were meant for each other – to live in community with one another. It will never be perfect on this side of heaven. God didn’t leave us to just have humans to fill our love need. We have to respond to Him in order to receive what we need on this side – and the other for that matter.
Some never find this Love. He’s there all right. He speaks softly and pulls on our hearts gently. We get to choose to respond to this Love by trying it out or we push Love away.
If we decide to respond by seeking God – He shows up. He doesn’t promise us an easy road – quite the opposite in fact – but He promises to deliver us through all we go through. You will find Him when you seek with all your heart. It doesn’t take long to find Him when you start. You just have to be open to finding Him when you start looking.
Not a thing on earth feels as amazing as experiencing the love of God. Nothing. We get to have multiple encounters with God in this lifetime. There are days when you can experience Him multiple times in just one day! No one can love you the way God can. Perfect love is found in Christ alone.
