Level Up In Love

1 Corinthians 13:2 

 And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

In life, we often strive to achieve greatness. In all things we seek to become great at, the greatest of them all should be the way we love each other but it seems to me that love has become the one thing that we give ourselves permission to lack when things aren’t working out in our favor. If we want to achieve greater in our careers, the first thing we seek to do is to add increase to our credentials. We study longer, harder and go back to school to level up. If we are struggling as a parent, we seek counseling and read books to improve our skills. I wonder why we don’t live in a world where love holds so much value that we desire increase instead of lack when we see ourselves failing in that area. When love hurts we back off. We tell ourselves somehow that it’s not as important enough to work just as hard as we do to buy a better car or a bigger house. For these things, I’ve witnessed people sacrifice far too much and still end up miserable because they are without love.

Valentine’s Day this year was the first for me for as long as I can remember that I didn’t have any love attachments other than with my children. It was a peaceful day that we enjoyed together and I didn’t feel like love was lacking. The day after, I woke up with romantic love on my mind. This is a place where I have strived to understand the true meaning of love more than anywhere else in my life. I’ve given so much and seemed to always end up empty handed because the love was never returned in a way that lasts. My heart is open and I’ll never give up on love but it seems that everyone I meet has become lazy in this area. People want to offer the world when the value of love is in the heart. Have we considered love so cheap that dinner and roses is all men think a woman needs? Have women reduced the value of love that we think he should be satisfied with our pretty? The flowers will die, the dinner passes faster than the week and beauty fades sometimes as fast as you can speak, so there must be something more that demonstrates the presence of love.

What is love and how do we level up?