I used to believe in love....

I used to believe in love until so and so broke my heart. I was a romantic before my last 4 relationships. My heart has been hardened by my experience. I do not believe in true love any more. I am sure you have heard one of these statements before. No? Well, you are blessed dear. Unfortunately for me, I have heard these, and predict that I will keep hearing them.

Before a certain point t, call it ex boyfriend, or some expletive term you might also use in your head to refer to him, you had these honeyed views, these rainbow feelings about what true love was.

You dreamt and fantasised about the man, the guy, the dude, the Prince who would one day smile at you and your heart would melt away, into happily ever after. Oh the visions you had. Your wedding day was a pearl and diamond affair. It was a thing of dreams!

Till you met Nev. Nev, the all too sweet charming gentleman who had nothing but love for you. At least that is what you saw and thought. He said sweet things, made you feel wanted, made you feel like a girl should feel. He was the Prince you were expecting. You gave over your heart. You did not resist, you did not hold back. This was your dream come true. You believed, no, you knew this was meant to be forever.

Forever has different durations, it has come to my attention. For you, the day he said he loved you no more, the day you found him with that other girl, the day he left you coz his parents did not accept people from your tribe, that day forever ended.

It ended and with it your notions of true love. It was the end of your dream.  The day your heart started becoming stone.

To some, this happened two, three or four times for it to sink in. After that, "I used to believe in love until so and so broke my heart. I was a romantic before my last 4 relationships. My heart has been hardened by my experience. I do not believe in true love any more."

So, I no longer give everything. I give a bit of me. I hold back. I do not trust easily. My heart is hardened now. True love does not exist.

I hear these words and wonder, what did you think love was? What did I think love was? Some custom made fantasy land where all my dreams come true and chocolate flows in the streams, while honey drips off vanilla grass?

We have made idols of true love, defined it with fairy tales, names of movie characters, and the like and so when our own image disappoints, we break. Our hearts break. Our minds change. We repent of it and adopt an even worse idol of it.

On this planet, water is life. However, water can be poisoned, sweetened, made bitter but that does not change it's essential intrinsic nature. Water is key in giving life. If I drank a cup of water that gave me typhoid, do I then repent of water and curse it till the day I die? (Which thereafter comes knocking on your door quickly).

Why then do we have the same views of love? We have been deceived of the true nature of love. And our hearts have hardened and crafted golden calves of what it is to us now. To some it is no longer even an idol but an imaginary pink elephant.

Love does not change. Love remains as steady as time. Love may not come in the gold or purple we have been told but it's intrinsic nature cannot be missed. We on the other hand change. People make mistakes, people hurt people but do those things change what love is? Love is never changing.

Perhaps it is high time we came to the true picture of love and maybe then we can never say words like "I used to believe in love until..."

Love is a person. He does not change. He is patient; He is kind; He is not envious or boastful or arrogant  or rude. He does not insist on His own way; He is not irritable or resentful; He does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. He bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

When we come to Him, may we let Him remove all our imaginations and notions of what love is and allow Him to show us what is truly is.  May we see. May we accept. May we be changed.

Selah.