i need...

"In God's world receiving love comes before giving love. We learn how to love only when we first learn how to receive the love of God and others. 'We love because he first loved us.'" This has blown my little world apart. The thinking in the world today is so backwards. It seems that you should give love....and then you will receive it. But maybe the way it really works is you have to receive it in order to know how to to truly give it.
I am reading True Faced with my 'small group'. I feel like everyone needs to read this chapter- 'The supreme gift of grace: love'.
Love is the topic....and a hard one at that. There are a lot of questions when it comes to love. But before you can answer how and when and what kind and who....we need to understand what its base is.
One of the steps I need to take in order to start experiencing love is understanding that I have needs.
Even typing that is hard for me!
But its a step I need to take! To admit that I need anything....has the possibility to kill me.
"If we see needs as weaknesses, we will hide our needs and limitations and call it self-reliance. Or we'll pretend that we have no needs and call it independence. Or we may believe no one should ever have to meet our needs and call it strength. Or we believe that as we get more 'spiritual' we outgrow our needs. This, we say, is maturity."

With out needs we can't experience love....how will we know what it is when it is met. When our needs are met we are loved...but how can love happen if we are denying our needs or just being completely blind to them. "Needs give us the capacity to feel loved."

Cry out: "I am unbelievably miserable and I need help."

Another important part of this love is trust. We need to be able to trust the person before we can let them love us.
"Lost in the darkness
Silence surrounds you.
Once there was morning
Now endless night.

If I could reach you,
I'd guide you and teach you
To walk from the darkness
Back to the Light."
-Jekyll & Hyde, The musical, act one

"Received love turns
frightened pretenders
into confident dreamers."


Reaching this point may seem impossible, it does to me right now. But my desire to truly be able to love someone because they have loved me is enticing. The path is long but if the desire to live life to the fullest is there...then what can stop us? Once you have this love it will be contagious... you won't be able to keep it!