Love Heals

Earlier today, I received a painful, but ultimately minor injury. As soon as it was known that I had an injury, my family dropped what they were doing to help me, mostly by fetching medical supplies, giving me sound advice, offering my comfort, and offering to take me to the hospital, if needed. Thankfully, I didn't have to go to the hospital. It was just a shallow, albeit large and painful, cut. We washed it, put some antibiotic cream and a bandage on it, and mostly left it at that. It should heal completely within a few days.

What struck me most about this incident was that my family loves me enough to care for me when I need it. They showed their love by putting their own work on hold in order to help me. I hope that I would be just as willing to help them. They showed their love for me by helping me, and thanks partly to that help, I expect to heal well. I am very thankful to my family for being there for me when I needed them, and I hope that I'm always willing to be there for them when they need me. Our love for each other can heal each other in more ways than one, and I'm grateful that I was able to call on that healing today.

Counterfeit Love

When I blogged about the wrong kinds of love last night, I briefly thought about what kinds of love are the wrong ones, and lust is certainly very high on the list of the worst of the wrong kinds of love. Drawing some strong contrasts between lust and love, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland once said the following:

Why is lust such a deadly sin? Well, in addition to the completely Spirit-destroying impact it has upon our souls, I think it is a sin because it defiles the highest and holiest relationship God gives us in mortality—the love that a man and a woman have for each other and the desire that couple has to bring children into a family intended to be forever. 

Someone said once that true love must include the idea of permanence. True love endures. But lust changes as quickly as it can turn a pornographic page or glance at yet another potential object for gratification walking by, male or female. 

True love we are absolutely giddy about—as I am about Sister Holland; we shout it from the housetops. But lust is characterized by shame and stealth and is almost pathologically clandestine—the later and darker the hour the better, with a double-bolted door just in case. 

Love makes us instinctively reach out to God and other people. Lust, on the other hand, is anything but godly and celebrates self-indulgence. 

Love comes with open hands and open heart; lust comes with only an open appetite.

He then said that "These are just some of the reasons that prostituting the true meaning of love—either with imagination or another person—is so destructive." I'm sure there are others, but these will suffice. Just about everything that is good about love is twisted and subverted in lust.

I think that's a large part of the reason so many Christians are so strongly against homosexuality. They focus on the "sexuality" part and assume that those feelings of attraction are mostly motivated by lust rather than genuine love. Yet, I know a homosexual person who is one of the most genuinely loving people I know, and we all know that heterosexuals can be terribly susceptible to the vice of lust. As far as I can tell, gay people are no more lustful, on average, than the general population. Lots of people are guilty of the sin of lust, not just gay people, and I haven't seen any solid evidence that gay men are more lust-driven than any other men.

No matter who we are or to whom we're attracted, we all need to be careful to ensure that our desire to be around people and spend time with them is motivated by genuine love, not some twisted counterfeit. Those who don't feel sexual attraction may think that they're safe from experiencing counterfeit love, but they're not. Love has many counterfeits. Though lust is likely the most egregious of love's counterfeits, it's not the only one. When we think we love someone, we need to consider whether we truly love them as human beings or whether we merely like them, or whether we're just hoping to get something out of them.

People can "love" other people in many different, bad ways and for many different, bad reasons. If we want strong, positive relationships, we need to make sure that we love others in the right ways and for the right reasons.

Too Much Love?

Love is a virtue. In fact, Mormon called charity, the pure love of God, the greatest of all virtues. Yet, most, if not all virtues, when taken to an extreme, can become a vice. So I wonder, if briefly, if it's possible to feel and/or express too much love.

The reason I wonder this only briefly is that God is said to have an infinite amount of love. Clearly, no amount of love can ever be "too much."

Yet, it's not unheard of for someone to love someone else "too much." Since we know that the amount of love isn't the actual problem, what is?

I think that, in the case of someone having "too much love," the actual problem is that they have the wrong kind of love. For example, someone could love someone else enough to want to protect them, but end up being overprotective, stifling their growth.

I think that we should try to follow God's example, not just in how much love we try to have for ourselves and others, nut also in how we express that love. Granted, God expresses His love in different ways for different people at different times, and He probably uses His infinite wisdom to know what sort of love to express at what times, but we can still try to follow His example using a combination of the best of our wisdom and as much inspiration as we can get.

God knows what kind of love we need, and He knows what kind of love we need to show to best help others. God is our perfect exemplar. By following His example, we can begin to figure out what kind of love to show at what times. But we can already be perfectly certain that there is no such thing as too much love.

Hearts Knit Together in Unity and in Love

While I was on my mission, our mission scripture was Mosiah 18:21:

And he commanded them that there should be no contention one with another, but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another.

I think that scripture is especially pertinent now, when there seems to be a good deal of contention and division. I think it's important that we find common ground, "look forward with one eye," and work together to bring about positive change.

I think we can agree that violence is generally bad, that innocent people shouldn't be killed or attacked or have their businesses vandalized, and that those who do harmful things should be held accountable. We can agree that our "criminal justice system" should be just, and not criminal. We can agree that black lives matter. We can agree that all lives matter. And we can agree that it's well past time for the pain and the violence and the discrimination and the hatred to stop.

We are all brothers and sisters. We are all family, despite any genetic, cultural, or personal differences. That which unites us as children of God should be stronger than that which divides us along racial or political lines. We should have "[our] hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another," and while there will always be disagreements, "there should be no contention" among us.

Of course, this goal is easier stated than achieved, but if we choose to love each other as brothers and sisters instead of hating each other as racists and rioters, then that will be a big step toward "having [our] hearts knit together in unity and in love" and toward working together to bringing about the changes we can agree need to be made.

Showing Love

There are many ways to communicate, beyond just using words. In the writing community, there's an oft-repeated bit of advice: Show, don't tell. It means that we should, as much as possible, demonstrate the information that we mean to convey, instead of just stating the information. It's one thing to say that Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant detective, but it's much better to show him observing clues, putting pieces together, asking the right questions, and following his train of thought. We know he's clever, not because the author said he is, but because we saw him doing something clever.

Similarly, we should try to show our love and not just state that it exists. As Elder David A. Bednar once said, "We should remember that saying 'I love you' is only a beginning. We need to say it, we need to mean it, and most importantly we need consistently to show it. We need to both express and demonstrate love."

So, how can we show love for the people whom we love? We can try to spend quality time with them, if that's at all possible. We can communicate with them and show real interest in them. We can show concern for their well-being and do things to try to lift their spirits and make them happy.

Of course, the ways in which we show love for other people can be as different as the people themselves. For some people, showing love may mean getting close to them. For others, it may mean giving them their space. And the best way to chow love for someone may change over time. One day, a person may need guidance and direction, and another day, they may need to be trusted to make good decisions on their own. The best advice I can give in general is to pay attention to other people and their spiritual and emotional needs and to try to meet those needs. Granted, that's easier said than done, and it's not anyone's job to meet the emotional needs of others, but I think that the more you love someone, the more you'll want to help them, and the more genuinely you want to help them, the more you'll want to try to understand what they individually need.

As Elder Bednar said, "We need to both express and demonstrate [our] love." It's good to tell others that we love them. We should do that more often. But we should also look for ways to show our love for them. I'm going to try to find ways to show my loved ones that I love them. I hope you do the same.

Love and Seek God

In a General Conference talk entitled The Love of God, then President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said that we need to love God, "For what we love determines what we seek. What we seek determines what we think and do. What we think and do determines who we are—and who we will become."

If we want to be and become like God, we need to think and do the things that will lead us to being and becoming like Him. Thinking about the Gospel and keeping the commandments are easier to do when we have an internal desire to seek God. And seeking God is practically automatic to those who love Him.

The more we love God, the easier it'll be to seek Him through thinking and doing the things that help us be and become like Him. So, let us nourish our love for God and use it to motivate us to become better people. In this fallen and disorienting world, it can be difficult to seek God, but that goal becomes easier as we increase our love for Him. 

The Importance of Self-Love

I hope you don't mind if I speak a little frankly this time.

I used to hate myself. I hated myself for having a particular flaw and for being too weak and stupid to overcome it. My hatred of myself was so strong that it almost destroyed me.

But I don't hate myself now. I forgave myself for being flawed, and instead, I began to love myself, warts and all. And since I began to love myself instead of hating myself, I've noticed that I've made measurable strides toward overcoming my flaw.

I now believe that my self-hatred had been self-reinforcing. Hating myself and fighting against myself only fostered destruction, not growth. My bruises couldn't heal because I kept beating myself up for having them. When I stopped beating myself up, I started beating my flaw instead.

There is a significant amount of power in self-forgiveness and self-love. Self-love can be encouraging and ennobling. Someone who loves themselves in a positive way can be their own role-model, their own cheerleader, and their own biggest fan. They can encourage themselves to live up to their best selves, building themselves up instead of tearing themselves down.

I've been tearing myself down for far too long. It wasn't healthy, it wasn't helping, and it wasn't what God wanted me to do. God has commanded us to forgive everyone and love everyone. That includes forgiving and loving ourselves. And now I think I know why. Self-forgiveness and self-love help us let go of that which is holding us back and instead reach toward what we can become.

I love myself. I love that which is good in me, and through positive reinforcement, I encourage that good to grow.

I strongly encourage everyone to try this. Find something you love about yourself and focus on loving yourself for having that trait. And if you can't think of something you love about yourself (I get that. I've been there.), ask someone who loves you why they love you and focus on that. And if you don't know anyone who loves you, ask God why He loves you. I promise that He does love you and that He has reasons for loving you beside just the fact that you're His kid. Everyone has traits that they can and should love about themselves and should love themselves for, and I think we'd all be happier if we did.