Tainted Love

Sometimes I can't sleep at night because my mind races. Tonight my mind is running a familiar track full of what if's and paralyzing fears. The bible says that perfect love casts out all fear. That would be helpful if I understood what perfect love is. Sadly, tonight I realized that I have no concept of perfect love. Its one of those ideas that fits in the same category as 'eternal life' and 'three-in-one'. My braid hears the words and doesn't even attempt to unpack it...

My tainted idea of love has been:

I need you. I need you to need me because I need you. I will give up everything for you to show you that I should be valued. Whichever way you choose to respond to me gives me a clear understanding of where my value lies. I measure my worth by your attitude towards me after I have served you.

I have lived my whole life out of that love theology. I have compromised myself in relationships and even work situations trying to earn value. It is exhausting and I have rarely gotten the results I hoped for.

I am exposing this mindset because I want it to change. It is a poison that effects not only the way I receive love, but the way I give it as well. I don't want my love for other people to come with a price. I have a build up of I.O.U's from people that they don't even know exist. Tainted love is like a dark seed that yields bitterness and false humility. Its a disease and I have been so sick from it.

I think that perfect love looks similar to what I do...but perhaps the motivation is different. Maybe the problem is the expectation involved with selfish loving. Love should involve sacrifice...but maybe when you are operating in perfect love it is so selfless that you don't even notice.

I know that the root of all this is finding identity in God. He is the only one who can love me perfectly. Problem is, I have applied my love theology to Him, and I don't know how to break it. I feel like I owe Him something (and technically I do...I owe Him everything). How can I sit there and allow Him to love me if I am not prepared to give up something? The more I give up for Him, the more complicated things seem to get....It makes my relationship with God seem more like a business deal than anything else. The worst is when I don't feel like I have anything I can give...those are the darkest times because I refuse to let God love me through them.

I don't have any conclusions. I still don't know what perfect love looks like, and I sure don't know how to receive it. Like I said already, I just wanted to expose my tainted love theology so that I can move away from its toxic touch in my life.