Learning How to Love After Divorce and Bipolar Depression

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flowers

After my divorce, I didn't love less; instead, I found that I loved more. There was a dark period in time in which I wrestled with demons. I saw all my flaws. All the horrible mistakes I had made. I had spent so much time caught up in the material, tangible things in front of me that I had failed to realize the truth until it all came crashing down on me. When my life fell apart and I was left with nothing, when it was just me in the dark, peeling back the layers of my life, wrestling with God to please kill me now, suddenly, only truths remained: that there is meaning in life and it is love. 

I guess God works in funny ways.

I learn something new about love each day, but what I know so far is that love is boundless. It can transcend time and space. It isn't limited. Instead, it grows. You can love freely. You don't need a person's permission to love. You can love regardless. Love is healing — when you love, you also forgive. You naturally extend grace. Love isn't always sunshine and roses. Sometimes it is sad, and it is difficult. Love never stops hoping, always believing, seeking, longing, striving.

There are many different ways to love; love is an emotion. But it is also an action. For example, sometimes you can taste love through food someone has made for you and feel a person's love for you through a touch.  Love persists, it stays with time. Love inspires us to be better. Love involves opening your heart — being vulnerable with others, but also opening the eyes to your heart to see others as you see yourself, seeing them as God sees them. You can love people you don't know, brothers and sisters in a shared, painful-sorrowful-happy-sad-and-everything in-between humanity.

There are empty loves, such as the ones we fall prey to such as for sex, money, material objects. These loves are self focused and limited, leading you no where but emptiness and potential misery. Then there are loves that are full. These are the loves we have for others, for a purpose and meaning for our lives greater than ourselves. We were created for so much more than ourselves, so much more than our own lives. We were created to love and to be loved. To share it, express it, create from it, grow it, nurture it. Our mission in life is to understand this and live it. Every day and second. Now.

Ellie

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