Love Love Love Love Love....oh.. and Love...

I know this is a weird question, but have you ever told someone you loved them when they weren't prepared to hear it? Only to have them look at you like you have 3 heads and give you a quick " ummm thank you" or maybe act like they didn't hear you?
I had this happen to me recently. I told this person I loved them and it glanced off of them like a bullet skipping off the confines of a parking lot in a shoot out. I'm awkward in situations like this anyway, you know? like this one time when I was real young, I wanted to kiss a neighbor girl down the road. I went to her door with intentions of kissing her on the cheek and all but she showed up at the door with peanut butter on her face. Not like in the corner of her mouth, but like on her cheek, way up high, like she had been really hungry and was gobbling her pbj like it was her last meal. I just stood and stared at her.. what if she was dying and it WAS her last meal? I couldn't be the last one to kiss a dying girl. I mean I wasn't even that good of a kisser. I had tried practicing with my Farrah Fawcett poster, but it hadn't really worked out that well.

So I told someone I loved them... I felt like an idiot.. I thought about the other things I could have said to keep the relationship in right form but I had to go and reveal my feelings.. you know "show my hand?" and make it all wrong and yucky... I have a friend named Kim who told me several times "Never show your hand". She was referring to my feelings in a relationship and told me it was bad for others to know your intentions. I didn’t' really like her advice. Not because it wasn’t' good advice, but to me when you don't give someone your intentions, it's a lot like allowing them to think you have no feelings for them. That whole stupid "Well if I didn't like you, I wouldn't talk to you" or "you know I care about you... I shouldn't have to tell you" thing people lay on you when they don't have the ability to speak their emotional feelings.

Interestingly I was dwelling on this again today, probably because I felt so bad, but really because there was something else I wanted to know in this incident. I just couldn't stop thinking how I had really messed up and how stupid I sounded because God knows if you keep your emotions pent up, then we never really suffer the embarrassment of it all, and in mid thought I was hit with a huge AHA moment. God spoke right in the midst of the whole thought process and I heard him loud and clear. I don't mean I had a bright idea and gave God the credit.. I mean I heard him speak boldly... "if I have been trying to get people to just receive my love for thousands of years and not having 100% luck at it, what makes you think you can do a lot better?" It hit me like a ton of bricks. God loves people everyday with a purer love than I could ever hope to imagine and people keep him at arms length daily, and if the God who created the heavens and earth is struggling? then what worry should I have?
The other AHA moment I had was when I realized that loving people isn't the wrong place for me to live in. If I intend to love someone, why would I be wrong for pouring out my heart to that person? If you look at Gen 3:7 it talks of Eve and Adam together eating the forbidden fruit and having their eyes opened… they immediately realized…they were naked. It can be interpreted many ways, either mentally naked, socially naked or physically without clothes.. I take it to mean they were without covering. God was their covering, God was the blanket that kept them completely without fear, without stress, without need, and when they separated themselves from that covering? They became fearful and needy and stressed and needing that relationship back. God walked with them in the cool of the day and talked to them as if they were his only friends and they had NO concerns, until they entered into the separation of sin.
Now mind you I am NOT a big sin guy. I don’t mean I never sin, I mean it’s not the axe I grind to call forth repentance and I don’t harp on it. I preach love and the fear of wrecking that relationship with God and the abstinence of sin to keep from doing so.
But here stands a man and woman who through no fault of anyone else have become separated. They don’t have that daily covering and affirmation any longer. Therefore God comes and tries to love them, but because of the rift they have caused? They are no longer able to feel it. So sin entered the world and people began to fill the void of pain with anything but God. God only wanted to be the answer and for them to enjoy the walk in the cool of the garden daily.

If the God of all the heavens can’t pour out the purest form of love and have people receive it without suspicion? Why should we fret if we can’t either?
The key? I think is to love people where they are with no guilt of their frustrations. Don’t carry the burden of those people when you do… simply love them till they know they are loved. Bring nothing condemning against them, only love… and tell someone you love them today ; )