Becoming Agape

"I love you," a friend recently said to me as we ended our phone conversation. At first it took me by surprise, but then I was happy she said it. Then a few days later, another friend did the same thing. I again couldn't help but smile. I mean, I was LOVED. By at least TWO people.

Now, I realize that for most of us, "love" has many connotations. And the love that my friends were expressing is different than the kind of love that I hope to someday have with one special lover. Or the kind of love I feel for my parents and siblings. But it is an important love, nonetheless, that I felt is the kind I most overlook.

Well, I felt that way until a few special new girl friends in my life had me start thinking about the Fruits of the Spirit and agape and how different we would live our lives if we knew that WE were truly loved. So, I've taken it upon myself to start trying to love EVERYONE. And I don't have to love them as my own family members or even as a dear friend. But I have to love them without selfish regard. This, I have realized is the love I most often overlook. Working toward including this love in my life is also, just so you know, one of the most difficult things I could have ever set out to do.

I mean, I really don't want to love the idiotic California driver who cut me off. I want to honk. Then honk again. Then when she looks at me scream through my closed window so she can't hear me but only imagine the profanities I'm yelling at her. Nor do I want to love the grocery store cashier who refuses to make eye contact while speeding through swiping my groceries just so she can look at her fingernails. Nor do I want to love the cheap customer who leaves a measly tip after demanding enough time and attention from me that I had to neglect other customers far nicer than he.

In all honesty, though, these people may temporarily annoy me, but reminding myself to react to their actions with agape instead of anger is much easier than loving others that I should already love. I've had the hardest time not responding with sarcasm to an annoying coworker, or joining in on a negative conversation about a friend's less-desirable personality traits, or being selfish and not offering my roommates the same courtesy of driving them north when one of them had JUST done the same thing for me two nights before. I want to be really selfish and self-indulgent and make myself look and feel better at the expense of others. But that is not love. So, I'm trying to love. Trying oh so hard.