I am hard to love. I am silent when I need to speak up and talk too much when I should be listening. I am impatient when things don’t go my way, when the traffic light turns red, or when the person in front of me in the 10 Items or Less aisle has fifteen items. Can’t they read?
I am a nerd. Translation: I want things to be Right, whether completing an assignment for school or simply mopping the floor. Ask my adult kids how they feel about picking up sticks. And yes, even the small ones. Those were not some of my finest mom moments. You would think my family would find these character traits endearing or that my house would be immaculate, but neither is the case. I am antisocial when I should be hospitable and overschedule myself when, for the sake of all those who love me, I should take some downtime. I am hard to love.
I’m sure you know some people like me. People who talk too much or only think of themselves. People who like to rant about whatever people are ranting about today. People who drive too fast or too slow. People who don’t have time for you or take up too much of your time. Those people are hard to love, too. If you have read this far, you have likely brought to mind a few people in your life who are hard to love. But I think it’s important to recognize that you are likely that “hard to love” person for someone else.
It seems we are all hard to love. And some of us are hard to love for reasons that aren’t so easy to identify. Some of us are hard to love out of self-preservation. We build walls to protect ourselves so that no one can hurt us, while those same walls prevent anyone from getting close enough to help us heal past hurts. The imagined loss seems to outweigh the gain, so we aren’t willing to take the risk. When I met my husband, I had taken up residence in a tall castle made of stone on a hill with a moat and drawbridge. And for some crazy reason, he was brave enough to accept the challenge of crossing that bridge and scaling those walls. God bless that man.
Other times, I find people hard to love when the real issue is the person looking back at me in the mirror. In the words of Bob Goff, “When I think someone should be more loving, it’s usually me.” Loving someone might require time, effort, and energy that I/we just aren’t willing to give. Our Western culture celebrates the individual, but there are 8.2 billion people riding the same planet around the sun. Buckle up, friend. Something about that figure tells me we weren’t meant to do life alone. We might actually need each other. Doing life with family, friends, and strangers entails risk and opportunity. Yes, there is the risk of hurt or heartbreak, yet there is also the potential of being seen, heard, supported, encouraged, and loved.
Love is a choice. And, over 2000 years ago, our great God, who set the moon and the stars in place, chose to come down from heaven in human form to show us what love looks like. Why? Because God loves us despite our “hard to love” condition. Jesus taught that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves. It must have been pretty important to him because he named loving others only second to the greatest commandment to love God with our entire being.1 He didn’t stipulate who we should love based on how much they look like or think like us. Jesus didn’t say we should only love those who have never hurt our pride or our feelings or inconvenienced us. And he didn’t teach that we should only love those who love us back. Instead, Jesus raised the bar, teaching that we should love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.2 This is an outrageous command and particularly hard to hear for the cancel culture we live in today, but also for the original audience. Who loves like that?! God does. And we can, with His help.
In the midst of our sin, Jesus willingly died the death we deserved to restore us to right relationship with our Heavenly Father. Perfect God-man on behalf of immoral, imperfect man. A divine act of grace! His sacrificial death on a Roman cross is our example, yet we’ve got our hand horn-ready in case the car in front of us doesn’t hit the gas on green. What room then, do we have in our hearts for those in our homes, at work, or in our classrooms? If God loved humanity so profoundly despite our sin condition, perhaps we might contemplate how we can love a few of those 8.2 as well. Consider canceling our cancel culture with audacious love. One day, you might be grateful someone chose to love a “hard to love” person like you. I am.
fear-less.me 