So with the current pandemic I have been homeschooling our twins for the last 8 months. What a ride! I can see the positives and negatives to homeschooling kiddos. I feel in some ways it for sure is better, but the social aspect has been a bummer as it has been almost non existent. Something I have loved though is when my kids have their google chats with their teacher. My sweet daughter was learning all about antonyms a few weeks ago. If you are like me you cannot remember what in the heck that even is….hahahaha….well it it’s a fancy way of saying “opposite” (what idiot decided to complicate that?). She was doing awesome, the teacher would say “hot”, my daughter said “cold” or “tall, short”. My daughter knew every single one until the teacher said “love”……..my heart was so still as I sat there waiting and knowing that she would not know the answer to this. My sweetie kinda chuckled and said “broken love” unsure of her answer. What a lesson I learned in that moment. Through the perfect innocence of a child I began to self reflect, a lot.
Perhaps many of us don’t hate, perhaps we have broken love. Through much pondering about this concept of broken love being the opposite of love instead of hate, I have been able to soften my heart and open my eyes. I have STRUGGLED to let go of so much hurt caused by loved ones. For several years I have had to be careful to not let my hurt turn into hatred. Having hate in our hearts regardless if we are justified to have it will darken our souls. Forgiveness is 100% for US not the butt face we are forgiving. Seeing your hatred as broken love is better than hating. It is hard to hate something or someone that we did not love first. Hate comes from love. Ex spouses grow hatred because they loved someone. Children can hate their parents because of the love they once had. Friends become enemies because of love they had. You see, people are filled with broken love.
Thinking of the negative feelings I have had that have darkened my soul and viewing them as a love that was broken makes me feel that they can be fixed……it is much easier to repair broken love than to repair hate. If we can get the word “hate” out of our vocab and recognize that our feelings are love broken it will give our heart relief. Most anything broken can be fixed, not saying that you wont still see the breaks and marks of being broken, but breaks often can be repaired. So give yourself a break and some love if you have felt “hate” and know that it is more likely broken love that you feel, not hate.
This all of course took me back to my fleeting faith. My love for the church was broken. It did not just shatter one day into tiny pieces, experience after experience, poor remark after poor remark chiseled at my testimony. Life and the overwhelming feelings of broken love (not hate) brought me here. The pieces are still there. I have not swept them away or ignored the shards that are looming close by. Walking away from the church means walking over those broken pieces and I know they will slice me open. So instead I am standing in the middle of the pieces of my broken love not knowing what piece to pick up or where to even place a piece if I pick it up. When I have reached down for a piece it almost surely cuts me, so I put it back down. And for now that is enough.