Community
I’ve written about friendships before because I see directly in my own life how the people you surround yourself with shape who you are.
There has never before in my life been a season where I have been as surrounded by people who I view as wise and who are intentionally challenging me for growth. I have never felt as safe in the relationships I have had to trust the way they are challenging me and not question my security or value in those spaces. The people I have surrounding me currently have been such a gift from the Lord in the ways that they love me.
Loving others includes pushing them, but if you push others without them knowing they are loved you can cause great pain.
It is one of the things I think we need to be careful how we handle. This is something that doesn’t work without healthy, regular, open communication. If you want to love someone well, open the door to conversation. My natural inclination definitely used to be to prioritize how the other person felt over speaking hard truths into their lives. Now this does not mean that it wasn’t good for me to care that they felt loved, but it is a fault when I allow that to block me from choosing the loving thing even when it won’t feel as positive.
I want to speak into both of these sides of the coin.
If you love someone, make sure they know it.
If you love someone, don’t leave them as they are.
Make sure they know it.
Yes, loving someone includes telling them, but loving someone also requires intentionality. You don’t love someone by accident. And if you want to love someone well, it requires a great amount of effort.
One of the things that I find most essential to loving others well is understanding how they experience love. If you want to love someone whose love language is words of affirmation, it does not matter how many gifts you buy them, they will not feel loved. It doesn’t mean that a gift will never be meaningful to them, but if I want them to know that they are loved, then I need to pick to communicate that in a manner that they experience as love.
My simple suggestion for this is to ask your people “what are your top 2 love languages?”
Sometimes this is an easy question, sometimes people realize later what they answered isn’t really their love language, but at the least it makes a start.
Don’t leave them as they are.
A great established truth is that all humans are broken. If you haven’t come to terms with that yet, I have bad news for you.
My advice here is NOT to fix them. If that is your mindset you need to go back to section one again.
BUT
When we love others we want to see them heal and grow. When we love others we see their potential and want that for them. When we love others we get excited about the person they can be.
Loving someone should mean loving them as they are, but it should include helping them to be all that God has called them to be. Sometimes that means uncomfortable conversations. Sometimes it can just be very little things. Encouraging growth doesn’t need to occur as some formal event, but it isn’t something you should skip.
Within this I want to clarify that this is not your role in everyone’s lives. This is your role within the people who make your community. The people who are your people. When you have depth of relationship and that level of intimacy you should also be encouraging and supporting them in growth.
Speak kindly. Try to consider their triggers. Be patient with their reactions. Show grace.
All of the above is easier said than done, but the best conversations others have had with me to help me grow have been done gently. That immediately creates an environment of safety which then allows the other person to receive the feedback from a position of security rather than from a position of defensiveness.
These conversations are hard. I can list plenty of examples from my own life from both sides of the situation that have not gone as well as I would have hoped, but there is still grace for that. Broken humans will never be capable of showing perfect love, but we can always work to grow better at it. For every time we fail, there is a Father who shows that love perfectly.
