Learning to Love: The Journey Part 2

My arrival here, was about as difficult as I expected.  Sometimes I am tempted to leave sooner, than later.  I am a runner.  Well, not a runner, but an avoider. Not that I avoid problems, problems are easier for me to face than people who are difficult to get along with.  I tend to avoid encounters with people who I do not feel comfortable around, which seems harmless, and quite natural.  I avoid awkward situations, that’s all.

However, I know that these times are simply challenging lessons in the course of learning to love.  Loving those who always make you feel so warm, and nice, does not prove how great your love is, anyone can do that.  It’s about treating others with love when it is most difficult to.

I say this because this is my current struggle, my current lesson.

Love is not just saying you love someone.The biblical definition of love, to me, truly describes it.  Be it love towards family, friends, or a significant other.

I wanted to break down the characteristics of love found in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (AMP) to be able to go back to it, and see where I am failing, and what I need to work on.

• Love endures long and is patient and kind:  If it has to endure long, and be patient it most likely indicates that the other party is going to be difficult, and we have to respond with kindness, and patience.  Love is what fills in the gap on our scale, when we weigh how bad the other person treats us, against how we treat them.  Love enables us to be kind to those that are not kind with us.
• Love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy:  Basically, if we love someone we should be glad when they have something that we wanted.  Love teaches us to let go our egos, and think of someone else’s happiness rather than ours.
• It is not boastful or vainglorious:  Meaning, when we love we are not concerned with always being the center of attention, and do not constantly feel the need to brag.  Love gives us the flexibility to be able to do this sometimes, and still not lose our identity.
• Love does not display itself  haughtily, it is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride):  Love’s ego is mostly absent, in the sense that a person who has truly grasped the concept of love, and operates in it, is usually humble when dealing with others.
• It is not rude (unmannerly)  and  does not act unbecomingly: (Pretty self-explanatory) 
• Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own rights  or  its                own way,  for  it is not self-seeking: So… it means we are not first priority when we truly love others.  Not that we are worth nothing, quite the contrary.  You are supposed to love people as much as you love yourself.   When you are full of love, you know you are complete whatever happens, so putting yourself as the priority is not of utmost importance.
• …it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong]:  What it tells us is that a person who loves is quick to forgive, and does not dwell on the wrong they suffered, does not take things to heart.  Love enables them to let go of these things, and forgive.
• It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right  and  truth  prevail: Also self-explanatory.
• Love bears up under anything and everything that comes: Wow, that means a lot of good, and a lot of bad…
• …is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without  weakening]:  I guess people would perceive this as naive, believing the best of everyone, keeping hope against all odds, and enduring everything.  It kind of brings up the image,in my head, of a starry-eyed child, we usually turn away from this to avoid disappointment.  However, love never fails [never fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end].  The disappointments we may suffer when we love,fade away, but love does not.

Do I practice all of this? Not even half, but I am learning.   If we were to sum up all of the previous points we could say love consists of swallowing our pride, and our ego, and putting others first. Not eliminating our importance, but loving others, as we love ourselves.

How I See Infertility

I wouldn’t say I am infertile, because ever since I was a little girl, I always assumed I was so motherly, it had to mean I was super fertile.  However, 3 and a half years off the pill (and not necessarily avoiding children, but not trying for them either), there has been no children, no pregnancy, sometimes no ovulation.  Of course, the first few missed periods, were disappointing, I even cried once. I would talk obsessively about babies, and pregnancy, but then again, I had always been obsessed with those topics even before I hit puberty.  In order to stop driving the people around me crazy with babies, I started writing it all down in a diary.

I admit, I went through the five stages of grief, and came out the other side, all recorded in my diary.   I finally got to the acceptance stage because I realized I was happy with my life the way it was.   I actually wrote: “I was 23 years old, and had already accepted the fact that it would always be us two.  I had accepted that NO children would come along, thus I would never expect one to.  I would say I was avoiding children just to shut people up, but the reality was that I no longer really cared.  I was enjoying my life, was busy working, and trying to bring balance to my life.”  Why was I going to despise the good life I had by wishing so much for it to change?  How do you miss or suffer for someone you have never met?

Therefore,  I don’t consider the infertility, I have experienced so far, a tragedy.  It is not a tragedy for life to stay the same as it has always been, if children don’t show up, that would not be a tragedy.  Tragedy is losing someone you’ve grown to love.  Tragedy is what my mother-in-law had to suffer when she lost a seemingly perfectly healthy 27 year-old son for no apparent reason, he just didn’t wake up one morning.  Nine years, and an inconclusive autopsy later, his death remains a mystery, and a horrible tragedy.  Tragedy is getting pregnant, raising a boy, living with him, loving him with all your heart, and then losing him like that.  So no, for me,  it is not a tragedy that I have not gotten pregnant.   Any sadness this “infertility” may have caused, can never compare to something like that.  Waiting for something to arrive that never does, hurts way less, than losing something that was there.

My Food Reviews on Foodiespr.com

It was an honor to be invited to be a food writer for foodiespr.com.  You can see my reviews in Spanish, and English on http://www.foodiespr.com/author/sara-dunphy/.  I write about food made in my area: the Northwest area of Puerto Rico.