I think we all know that there are many different kinds of love. From the gooey ‘come kiss me’ to the texts that read ‘hey just checking up on you how’s life?’ However, when it comes to unconditional love people tend to think of it as black and white. I truly believe that there are two different types of unconditional love. This may sound strange at first, but stick with me and you’ll know what I mean.

We all know that God loves us unconditionally. This kind of love, we as humans can’t quite grasp. God loves us so much that he sent his only son to die on the cross for our sake. This is common knowledge, but just pause and take a minute to really think about this. Let that sink in. His only son died on a cross! Despite this, we still sometimes turn away from God we stumble and fall constantly. Yet, he still loves us. I’m talking about that unconditional love. No matter how many times we fail him or how we fail him, he will always accept us back without any hesitation.

As humans, our unconditional love is a bit less devoted. We can love other people such as family, friends, and significant others unconditionally. However, it is much more difficult to love as deeply as God does. There are so many times that we fail each other, not just God. When this happens, it makes it more difficult for us to love and forgive each other because after being hurt time after time it becomes harder to love and forgive in fear of being hurt again. This becomes a sort of self-preservation thing; we protect ourselves from things, or in this case people, who hurt us. There are times when ties are cut between family members for various reasons. As a result of this, we may not feel like we love them anymore. However, we still do just in a different way. We may not like them anymore, but we do still love them because we want the best for them.

This human kind of unconditional love is even hard sometimes. I know I had a hard time grasping it. My boyfriend and I actually had a fight over it one time. In our eyes, dating is meant to lead to a potential marriage. We had broken up a few times, some of which was over things that don’t even matter which lead him to think that our kind of love was conditional because we couldn’t stay together, so why should we aim for marriage? Our relationship has been through a lot! However, when I look back at it, all the times that I didn’t like him very much I still loved him. My love for him kept changing and growing, and very soon, I realized that I do love him unconditionally! We have become more serious with our relationship, which I thank God for every day! God has helped us to strengthen our relationship and work through our problems instead of just walking away.

Thanks to God, we can love others unconditionally. Though it is hard sometimes and we can’t love as deeply as he can we can try our best. So get out there and spread the love!