Love Should Not Hurt – Read 1 Cor. 13:4-7

There are times when love hurts, aren’t there? And one does not have to have ever been abused to know the pain of love. Just as abuse can take on many forms—mental, verbal, or physical—so can the pangs of love.

I remember high school and being in love with a guy who was at least six years my senior. Oh, the pain of being told he was too old for me, then forbidden from even entertaining the thought of having any relationship with him. Then there was the pain of falling for a guy who appeared to be the consummate romantic, any girl’s dream, only to discover him to be an ordinary, healthy young man who could not possibly continue in a relationship with a girl who wasn’t “putting out.” It is a dreadful day when the man of your dreams becomes the author of your nightmares. It is an even more painful day when you face that you are indeed too young for romantic love in its most total sense.

Then there are the dull aches of love. The formal end to a twenty-year marriage that had its informal ending in year five does not hurt as much as it causes one to breathe a sigh of relief that the end has finally come. The dullness comes because the relationship was fractured long before you ever left, which makes you wonder why it took so long to go. The only love you leave with is care for a “nice” human being. You see, “nice” people are easy to tolerate and even easier to ignore. They don’t bother or abuse you, and you don’t faze them. But that kind of love only works if you can live with dull pain and emptiness.

But then love can also be complete, truthful, solid, balanced, and stabilizing. It is the kind of love that is first rooted in God, then in self, and, once through those channels, comes out to others with tremendous power. It is the kind of love that can sustain you when you don’t particularly like a person for the moment. It is the kind of love that meets needs, works hard, and, above all else, does not abuse or even misuse.

I am among those blessed to have that kind of love in my life. It is that kind of love that strengthens one to be a blessing to those who do not know it—to the neglected, injured, and mistreated. We do not fully understand why victims remain with their abusers, but we don’t need to comprehend. We can and must share the source of complete, truthful, solid, balancing, and stabilizing love that we have received so that they will know that love does not have to hurt.

Copyright © 2021, D’Ann V. Johnson