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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: LOVE (agape and/or phileo) (03/12/15)
Is it possible to love others more than myself? Ask me when my feelings get hurt, and all I want to do is snap back - bitingly.


The words "I love you", so easy to pronounce and joyously known to the eyes and ears, but what magic creates the reality in hearts?


You hurt me, I hurt you - simple. Tit for tat. My dog is bigger than your dog. Take that. Are you as miserable as I am yet? Eye for eye, etc.


Pain is a perfect medium to relish in self-love. You hurt, I hurt. Who hurts most? You yell at me, I cringe, cry and scream back. Who wins? Who loves?


"I love you more than you love me." The taste of blood acrid as I bite the words out. Self-righteous anger smothers me.


You wonder what unleashed the beast in my breast? You should know, you unleashed the love-destroying heartbreak.


All senses alert - anger is terrific for magnifying lost souls. The smell, taste and desire for bloodshed spurs my words out in spiteful barks.


Do I love you? How? My entire being is poised to lacerate your soul with poisons ejected from my baleful heart.


Who and what - and why am I? I choked back tears and rage when you raised your voice to intimidate me.


I loved you quite madly, and almost perished with unrequited love.
I asked you to define love. You said "impossible."



You quoted approximately fifty terms technically describing love As you droned through your list


I realized you didn't love me. I married you anyway. A pathological/symbiotic relationship. I needed you to need me.


I wasn't experienced in many of the forms of love - I just knew that hollow protestations of love are just that - hollow protests.


You needed a mother - I needed a husband. Easy for you, but miserable for me. I was infatuated with the idealization of love.


I couldn't love you beyond my terrible hunger to truly be loved. I ran away from the reality I couldn't accept - to sin against God.


I literally looked for love "in all the wrong places."


God restored me through Jesus. Easy to say, hard to believe. God is the birth of love, the fulmination of hearts joined.


How could I think to know the unknowable? To love the unlovable? To love and be loved in return, running to the Arms of Jesus?


I thought I knew Jesus. Professions, protestations of undying love to the King to Whom I missed the Message He conveys?


My heart was yielded to myself. Welded to me. I played at empathy, sympathy - when I should have prayed.


Did God create me to be my your helpmeet? I couldn't help myself. I cheerfully quoted memorized Scripture verses . . .


Parroting God's Word, standing proudly in my fractured faith. Did I truly love God? I assumed so - but mere head knowledge doesn't equate heart knowledge.


I still grieve for you, the first man I loved - and for myself, our marriage designed to be the shining star, devastatingly sucked into a dark hole.


I have been given a new love. God gifted me with a new husband that didn't have fifty definitions to explain his feelings towards me.


A passionate, soon to be on-fire lover of our Savior - his heart wrapped around my broken heart and we both stumbled, staggering to His Throne.


He is bathing us in His mercy, strengthening us through His grace, having delivered us from the imprisonment of despair engendered by self-love. Satan is not pleased.


God is. God is LOVE
The epitome of unselfish love.


Love requires sacrificial giving - God being the ultimate Giver - His Son - Jesus, the Christ.


I was emotionally immature, unwilling to love myself more than I loved you. My lips said I understood, but my heart twisted.


I wanted to thrust my misery like a burnished blade piercing your insincere heart. I didn't realize the pain you were suffering.


You, being an only child of parents who, themselves, were only children - so lonely and so isolated from love's reality.


I realize your parents used you as a battering ram between them. Their bickering and lack of Jesus caused them to die inside.


And destroyed what little faith you held . . .


We all die, miserably. The only real hope we have is in our risen Savior. I wish I knew that fifty years ago.


I wish I knew.
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This article has been read 2086 times
Member Comments
Member
Date
Brenda Rice
03/19/15
Okay...lots of emotions. Well written. Hope it helps to put the past behind you, if this is a true story.
C D Swanson 
03/20/15
Categorically written in an emotional piece for the topic at hand. This well written piece should rate nicely.

God bless~
LaVonne Wood
03/22/15
Thankfully,I never had to experience a bad marriage. I know there are many who struggle as this MC has. Thanks for sharing this emotional story of love. Blessings, LaVonne
Verna Cole Mitchell 
03/24/15
This is obviously from the depth of your heart. You expressed your emotions well. My favorite line was
"standing proudly in my fractured faith." One suggestion would be to end it on a high note with the stanzas about God's love and sending Jesus. If you wanted to use the latter stanzas, they would work well before the part about the second husband.
Ashley Rowland
03/24/15
This is a very insightful and emotional piece. I think it's also applicable to more than just divorce situations. I identified with a lot of these emotions and thoughts because of regrets in past relationships before my husband.