Love

As I contemplate the areas where I feel led to grow and develop, they can all be summed up with one word: love.

So as a new year begins, I am not making a list of goals that I will inevitably forget about in just a few short weeks. No timetables of accomplishments I want to achieve, no regimented schedules to help me get there, no pressure to be a perfect version of me.

I just want to focus on love. I want love to be my motivation in my daily life, in my decisions, in my interactions with others, in my treatment of myself.

Will I fail at this sometimes? No doubt about it. I’m human; of course I cannot love perfectly. But I feel this urge within my soul to love more genuinely.

And it is not something I can do on my own. I can force loving actions, maybe, for a time. But I cannot force love. So in order to love more genuinely, I must draw closer to the one who is love. My prayer is that I will be able to see and feel God’s love for me more than I ever have before, and that he will help me love others the way he wants me to.

I know this is a scripture that pretty much everyone knows, but I never get tired of it. I think it is so beautiful.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.