Measuring love

By Mia Pohlman

Sometimes I am guilty of measuring my love, especially with my family.

I want everyone to know the sacrifices I'm making, and I make sure to verbalize how my sacrifices are inconveniencing to me.

I want others to feel indebted to me for my sacrifices, to place me on a pedestal and laud me for my goodness.

What happens, though, is I cause the people I love and who have been gifted to me to feel as though they are a burden, and I trap myself in a cycle of bitterness and resentment.

Love becomes drudgery.

I recently heard words that have been attributed to both St. Augustine and St. Francis de Sales: "The measure of love is to love without measure."

This is a reminder I need sometimes -- love does not ask for or require anything in return. It is free, and it is abundant.

There's something to be said, though, for knowing the cost of something and still choosing to do it.

The Rend Collective Experiment says it in their song "The Cost": "I've counted up the cost, and you are worth it."

Like Jesus dying for us, it's rational and reasonable to find out what's at stake, and it's living in love to disregard it.

I think my desire for others to know about my sacrifices comes from the misplaced deeper desires of wanting to be set free and wanting to have purpose.

It is love that sets us free, and love is sacrifice.

Sacrifice does not abide in recognition; it abides in faith the one who has sacrificed for me sees and knows me intimately, my purpose is to praise him, and if this is who I live and move and have my being in, nothing is ever wasted.

My every breath, my every blink, becomes worship.

I've learned what we give is oftentimes what we receive back from people; the way we treat others is very often the way they treat us in return.

If I appreciate someone, they often respond with gratitude. If I show someone how genuinely cool and worthwhile they are, they often reciprocate. If I extend kindness or love, it is often not withheld from me, either.

We are people with hearts made to love others and receive love the way our God does; we can't remain immune to kindness without being changed. Either others' kindness or our own will transform us.

Of course, some people never will respond in the way we wish they would; we will be disappointed and exhausted by our efforts if they are for ourselves, a measure of our success, and therefore not really appreciation, admiration or love at all.

When I seek my fulfillment in others, I've found I always come up empty.

It is God alone who can fulfill us, and if we remain rooted in God, knowing everything we desire is found in God, we are freed to be to others what we want others to be to us because our own needs are already met in God; others' reactions to us become inconsequential.

Our God loves us without measure; let's live in this love and love others like this, too.