I was recently told it was difficult to love me, or maybe it was that I wasn’t easy to love.  Either way, the end result was the same.  I wanted to grab any fleshy piece of skin I could reach and twist until it showed the other person just how hard it really was to love me.   Just another of my lovable traits…violence.

My first reaction, directly after inflicting pain, was indignation.  I am NOT hard to love.  I don’t think he’s hard to love, how could he feel like I was hard to love?  It seems like the person who is going to marry you should think you are easy to love.  Right?  I wondered about his past girlfriends, were they easy to love?  I’ll admit I’m stubborn and opinionated, and outspoken, and I pout, and I’m frequently convinced I’m right, and I may feel as though the gravitational pull of earth has something to do with where I stand….but really, does that equal hard to love?

 

So I started thinking about who I felt was easy to love.  My family, my friends, my fiancé?  Obviously I love all of those people, but after thinking about it, none of them are easy to love.  We have fights, we argue, we disagree, we get disappointed, we disappoint and even though they are people I love, it’s work.  Those are all relationship I have to work at.  Granted, some are easier than others, but none are flat out easy. 

I guess it goes back to this notion of love being something you fall into, some thing that occurs by chance, a mystical, magical wonder that we have no control over.  I’m not sure who to blame for these misconceptions, but I would like to point the finger at someone.  It took me awhile to figure out that attraction is by chance, love is a choice. 

Love is a choice and not just marriage love, but sister love, and mother love, and friend love.  It’s something we have to choose daily, and something I have to work at daily.

As I was driving to work today I thought about the one love I had that shouldn’t be hard; my relationship with God.  But even that requires work and it’s not always easy.  I’m not always obedient, I don’t spend enough time with Him, and I have a hard time trusting Him.  If there’s one person it should be easy to love it’s God.  But still, it’s not easy, I have to work at it, and it’s a choice I have to make every day.

In all fairness, I should recant my previous statements about how easy it should be to love me.  If I have to work at loving God, then I should give…ahem… people a little slack when it comes to loving me. If life were fair, I would take back the flesh twisting, but I can’t so he’ll have to settle for a “my bad.�