What Love is Not.

I'm a young woman, but I've had my devastating days and I've had my blissful days. The one thing I will forever protect is love. Because there is no greater gift than love.

Paul Coelho stated it best, "Love is joy so don't convince yourself that suffering is a part of it." With that being said, the one thing that I am sure of is that love does not hurt and no one has proven to me (or can convince me) otherwise. Love is a whole lot of things, but it does not hurt and we don't have to suffer because of love. [Romans 13:10 - Love doesn't hurt others] So often, many of us have been preconditioned into thinking that loving someone means it isn't real love if there is no pain attached to it and that heartache is equivalent to real love, but what I've learned is that our hearts don't ache because of love. When you have the perception that to love means to be in pain; the relationships you end up being in will always be the source of your unhappiness. It's so important to understand what love is and what love is not. When you love someone, pain is the last thing you would want to inflict on someone.

Lies hurt. Distrust hurts. Rejection hurts. Loneliness hurts. Death hurts. Resentment hurts. I can name a whole lot of things that hurt, but love is NOT one of them! Because love is the only thing that covers pain and keeps you from giving up after experiencing that pain. Love sees the potential in a person. Love fights to see better. Love is strength and teaches us to endure. Love takes accountability. Love is humility. Love gives us patience. Love keeps us optimistic and makes us bold. Love makes us brave and it gives us hope. Love teaches us to believe in the impossible. Love heals. God's desire for us is to experience true love so why would it hurt? [1 Corinthians 13:4 - Love is ALWAYS patient. Love is ALWAYS kind] Loving the wrong person is what hurts. When you feel that love hurts then you need to know that it is not love. It can be a lot of the things - fear, attachment, and more, but it is not love.

Dysfunction, Love, & Loyalty.

I hate that we live in a time where everyone wants you to feel like you don't have options in life. This has become such a "take it or leave it" generation & it is so annoying because that is not how it goes. You have the option to choose whatever you want for your life & that includes love. There is no such thing as your standards being too high if that's what works for you! You're the only one that has to live with the decisions you make. So to allow someone to make you feel like you're asking or believing in the impossible is only an injustice to yourself. The issue at hand is that this generation has become comfortable with dysfunction. Love does have a powerful way of keeping us tied to people who sometimes wound us. Even with the best intentions some people just can't do better. It hurts to hold on, but you're scared to let go because for so long it's the only way you've known. We use past and current toxic relationships & experiences to believe that is the way things work. We trust the person in the relationship & absorb everything they say or do. And then we resist the need to challenge or question that possibly we deserve better than what they are giving us. We hang on to the belief that we have to stay connected and loyal, even though being with them hurts. The battle is already over, but for many reasons we struggle to keep up the fight. Dysfunction becomes your safety zone and we confuse it with love and loyalty. Truth is that love and loyalty are two separate things that don't always belong together. Loyalty shouldn't come with diminishing yourself. Since we did goodbye come with a price? Why would you bid your freedom if claim you've had enough?

Ask yourself and answer honestly, "How many scars have I justified because I loved the person holding the knife?"

Why are toxic relationships so destructive?

When you're in a healthy relationship you realize how circular love is. This is because when it's healthy, what you give is what will come back. That is with anything in life. What you put in the earth, is what will eventually come back to you. The problem is when it's not healthy, it shows. Because if you're giving out love the way it should be given, but still not getting that in return then it becomes destructive. Why? Because when what comes back is the opposite of what you're giving, it leaves you feeling small, defeated, depleted, & undeserving. Ultimately it vexes who you truly are and what you truly deserve. Read this clearly: YOU CANNOT CHANGE TOXIC RELATIONSHIPS OR MAKE IT WORK. NEVER. Do people have the capability to change? Yes, but you cannot change them. There isn't a switch you can click to make it work. The HARD pill of truth to swallow is that if anything was going to be different it would have happened by now. Breaking away from a toxic relationship can feel like tearing at barbed wire with bare hands. The more you do it, the more it hurts, so for a while, you stop tearing, until you realize that it’s not the tearing that hurts, it’s the barbed wire – the relationship – and whether you tear at it or not, it won’t stop cutting into you.

The one truth that matters.

When you make the decision that you no longer want to deal with dysfunction and toxic relationships in your life, it will be hard to let go, but it will eventually get easier as time passes. It always does. Always. The issue is that we don't allow the opportunity for "easier" to come because we find ourselves right back on the dysfunctional and toxic roller coaster ride before it ever really even had the chance to completely end. Why would you sacrifice your growth and change? YOU WILL BE MISERABLE. You can keep up the facade for as long as you want, but what the facade won't do is heal you from the soul sucking grief that toxic relationships bring you. Those who genuinely love you want you to be as whole as you can be. Sometimes choosing health and wholeness means stepping bravely away from that which would see your spirit broken and malnourished.

The only truth you need to know is this: If it hurts, it’s hurtful. I am not naive & I'm absolutely aware that there is no such thing as a perfect relationship, but I do know what a healthy one is. You have to set boundaries NOW. You will never be obligated to choose people who are toxic just because y'all may have created a family. If they are toxic, the simple truth is that they have not chosen you. The version of you that they have chosen is the one that is less than the person you would be without them. It's okay to want to see the potential in people, but that's God's job and theirs to reach. Not yours. Stop making excuses

Your job is to choose your own health and happiness over their need to control you. If you want to stay, that’s your choice, but see their toxic behavior for what it is – a desperate attempt to keep you little and controlled. What if one day you decided to make the choice to be stronger and braver than anything that would lessen you?

Staying in toxic relationships just because you're comfortable is not an excuse, though. Single and happy beats comfortable and miserable any day. The first step is to always love yourself first and enough to want the love that God intended for you to have. My heart breaks for those who choose dysfunction over peace & happiness. It really does. May we all learn who we truly are & accept nothing less than that. Know your worth & believe it. Choose you above all else.