Learning to Love “Love”

Growing up, February 14th wasn’t a holiday I looked forward to or planned for, so when the morning came and my mom made waffles with ice cream, I got to go to school and share candy with my classmates, and then come home to a heart shaped chocolate cake… it was a pretty great day. Being too young for (and disinterested in) dating, Valentine’s Day got to be about showing up for friends through the little sweet ways in life. 

Now being 25, I’ve gone through quite a few different perspectives on the holiday. In high school I got the classic: dinner and a movie with bouquets of roses. In college I learned about “Galentine’s Day,” and started prioritizing hanging out with my friends and being thankful for those relationships. My single and tumultuous years post-college made me want to turn my back on any vulnerable emotion and be a grieving grump forever. I’ve moved past that, and on the 15th, I’ve been introduced to Lupercalia (an ancient Roman festival preceding the celebration of Valentine’s day). There are a few practices that recognize it differently (the original festival honored health and fertility… and animal sacrifices…) but the one most intriguing to me celebrates self-love. Having Galentine’s Day on the 13th, Valentine’s Day on the 14th, and Lupercalia on the 15th, is a fun way for me to have three days back to back where I get to honor platonic, romantic, and self-love – a balance I’ve enjoyed maintaining. 

We talked about love a lot in the church growing up. Love is patient, love is kind… God is love… these three remain, faith, hope, and love… I’m grateful that I was introduced to a truly loving God. I’m also sad because as I developed my faith, spoke with different faith leaders, and attended different churches, that loving God was twisted to be something different. The Church was where I learned about unconditional love, but it’s also where I felt some of the most conditional love and rampant hate.

After being taught that God’s love is good and pure, I was later taught that harsh love is “true love.” I saw members being excluded or treated differently because of their identities or different choices they made (like drinking alcohol even after being 21). Leaders used shame to manipulate us into acting in the exact ways they believed were “right” and constantly reminded us that we were inherently broken. I became confused. Did God love me, or was God constantly disappointed in me? For a while I believed both were true, but as I kept trying to hold all of those perspectives, I twisted into a mental pretzel. I was striving for the impossible without leaving space to simply be me. 

I doubted myself. I constantly questioned if what I was thinking was good or if it was “temptation.” Every leader I sought counsel from had a drastically different response about how to discern. This hit a breaking point when my mental health began impacting my day-to-day life. I finally went to get professional help only to have a pastor praise me for “admitting to my sin of anxiety,” and when I pushed back that I was medically unwell, he shrugged and said it was both a medical and a spiritual issue (his tone had me questioning if he truly believed that). 

This was one of the first times I felt on the “outside” of the church. I was now one of the people to “reach” or “pray for” because of my “sin.” I tried to ignore those feelings but they only worsened when I found myself with an unplanned pregnancy. I felt truly out of the church’s reach because what I needed wasn’t shame or “tough love.” I needed support. 

I needed the friend who drove me home after I found out I was pregnant. I needed the friend who took the day off of work for “whatever I needed.” I need the friend who sat and held me months later when I cried about the support I thought I had deserved. And in hindsight, I needed all of you who have since reached out and said “I wish I would’ve known so I could’ve been there with you.”

Love is patient, love is kind… love takes action. Love isn’t a concept to talk about theoretically. Love is showing up for others. Love is showing up for yourself.

Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful for my partner. I enjoy having something to celebrate when it comes to the cheesy, romantic, overdone cliches. At the same time, we’re both invested in other relationships as well. In the past five years I’ve taken hit after hit after hit and I can confidently say that what’s kept me getting back up and moving forward was a different kind of love than I saw in my later experiences with the church. It was in people showing up and listening, sharing, and mutual vulnerability. It was in friends allowing me to learn to be myself, trust myself, and making space for whoever that turned out to be. I’m excited to dig into where I’ve seen love even amidst the chaos, but know that younger versions of me would be shocked to see where I’m finding it. Where have you been intentionally making space to appreciate the expected (and unexpected) expressions of love in your life?