This life is unbelievably temporary. Blink, and the whole world has shifted.Inhale, and everyone has moved. Exhale, and time has disintegrated the most precious realities that no longer stand to be true. We are in denial, but one second we can have everything we believed that we ever wanted and then the next it be stripped away. We believed that we wanted it, but sometimes we try to change ourselves and adapt to fulfilling that belief.
I've been afraid of changing because I've been building my life around the impossible task of forcing someone to love who isn't yet capable. I've been afraid of changing because the comfortable feeling of getting lost in another's arms had me straying away from the fact that there is much more to this life and its love than going through the motions and convincing myself that it's right. Most importantly, though, I've been afraid of changing. And I've been afraid of that changing because I'm afraid to admit to myself that I haven't found the love that does, and I haven't been the one doing either.
We aren't meant to change. I truly believe that we all know this, but we put blinders on the moment that we convince ourselves that we are powerful enough to have a person be someone who they are not. It doesn't mean that we aren't meant to grow and to change directions here and there, but there are certain things about our characters that create the foundations of who we are, and only God has the power to modify those technicalities that he created within us. Yes, love does, but it can't undo.
First John 3:18 tells us to "let us not love with words or speech but with actions and truth." I believe that sometimes we stray from this. We turn to the superficial tendencies of this society to say what we think we should be feeling instead of using our actions to determine the words that are true. We have intentions of going out of our own ways for the sake of another, but sometimes we don't live intentionally because we take for granted the promise of a tomorrow with that person. Tomorrow is never a promise.
I cannot pretend for one second that I know much about love. I am guilty of relying on my words to have me convinced that I truly know what it means to love another person for who they are and not who I want them to be for me. Yes, I know that in the past I have felt it, but I'm not even sure for a second that I can explain it. That's because love speaks with actions, and it cannot be explained by the power of the spoken word. It must be overpowered by the truth of sincere actions.
I thank Bob Goff for opening my eyes to this in his book "Love Does," and I am sincerely sorry to the people who I have wronged by forgetting that love is a do thing. However, at the same time, "love pursues blindly and without end," so it is up to us to realize our own worth and to understand that love is more than a word; it is an action. It is meant to be felt, not talked about.
Sometimes things shift in our lives to open our hearts up for greater possibilities, and no matter the heartache that ensues, we must believe that it is for the purpose of helping us inch ourselves closer to our God-given dreams. Nobody ever said that it was easy, and it is true that words are much easier. However, actions speak louder.Speak with actions because love does.