"And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God." Ephesians 3 :18-19
I once heard Whoopie Goldberg say if anyone ever tells her she completes them, she will flee. You know, romantic style;
"You complete me."
I'd run too. If I complete you, what's left for me? I am a self-confessed selfish person. I'm not entirely sure love comes as easily for me as I presume it does for others. So, I would definitely have second thoughts if a person told me I "complete" them. More so, because I have now realized that it is possible to give so much of yourself to someone else that you have nothing left for you. The other time, I tweeted that vows with the sentence "I can't live without you" make no sense to me. Why can't you live without a person? "I CAN live without you, but I don't ever want to." That makes sense. Although the last few sentences may sound cold, heartless and a tad unromantic, they are absolute truths. No one is indispensable; everyone is replaceable. You and I. For the purpose of this post, I'm mostly talking about romantic (& sexual) love except of course when I mention God's love.
Do you recognize a common thread/pattern in the last paragraph? We* tend to look for love in all the wrong places. We tend to seek wholeness, completeness, and perfection in human beings who are just as fallible as we are. We then turn around to despise them when they fail or are unable to give what we sought, which they really were incapable of giving anyway. Don't get me wrong; I'm the chief advocate of setting high standards. However, while setting these standards, you need a jolt of reality to remind you that no matter how kind, loyal, faithful, sexy, intelligent, maybe even rich this person is, they would never EVER complete you. They are incapable of giving you a fullness of life. Sure, they can and probably will make you happy, but they can't make your life complete, or give you a fullness of life. I mean if a human being is capable of that, their own life must be pure perfection, which is certainly impossible.
There's a love enough to complete you though; a perfect love. God's love for us is indescribable, so I wouldn't bother using words to convey its depth or width. What I'll say though is that may we indeed be blessed with the ability to understand God's love. Understanding God's love to some extent will make you confident and rid you of insecurities that make you seem like a mad woman. Instead of driving yourself crazy about whether a guy loves you or not, or whether he's cheating, or why he's not giving you enough attention and the other shenanigans that go on in 21st century relationships, if you understand the reach of God's love, you wouldn't care about any of that. You wouldn't because you have all the love you need. You understand who you are in God. You understand that you are to die for, and then you begin to not care what some other person thinks, or how they act. After all, can you think of a better love than giving your only son that some folks may have eternal life? Understanding and receiving God's love is the ultimate guide to a better self esteem. Remembering that God loves you and thinks you are special will absolutely change your life.
Love,
I
*I'm mostly talking from the female point of view.
No comments