Love. It’s what we all want. What we all need. It is what we crave.

But what does Love mean? What does it mean to live loved? Is that even possible? Is it possible to live loved all the time, even when we feel loved less than?

I’ve mentioned a teary time or two that I’m reading Ann Voskamp‘s book, The Broken Way. I’m currently in a love-hate relationship with it. And with Ann. I mean nothing bad about Ann at all. Don’t misunderstand. But it’s like she lives in my town, or at least in my head and is pointing out all the places I need to change to grow.

It was through her book I started putting a red cross on my wrist. As a reminder to me every day to live cruciform. To live in the shape of a cross every day. To remember the best gift is to love others. To remind myself to Be The Gift…to Give It Fully Today.

When I choose to focus on someone else who is just as needy as I am, to focus on them and meeting their needs, trusting the Meeter of my needs to meet my very great needs. When I do this then the healing of my broken and shattered places begins.

When my healing begins, my cup is no longer empty.

It’s a little oxymoronic I think to have a blog about my FULL cup when it seems my cup lives empty.

But that is how I am to live. I am to live empty, poured out, given out in love to the One who loves me.

“‘Love will always make you suffer. Love only asks, ‘who am I willing to suffer for?'”

Those words leaped of the page of Ann’s book last night.  I underline it in green, and read it over a few times. Trying to grasp the meaning. Rejecting the statement as impossibly untrue. Love doesn’t make you suffer. Love erases suffering.

Then I read further.

“Love, before it is anything, to be love at all, it is first patient. …patience is nothing but a willingness to suffer. Patience and the word passion, they both come from the exact same root word, patior, to suffer. …Passion embraces suffering because there’s no other way to embrace love. Love isn’t about feeling good about others; love is ultimately being willing to suffer FOR others.” (from Ann’s book, The Broken Way, page 137. emphasis mine.

And I was stopped dead in my reading tracks.

Love is being willing to suffer for others…because Jesus (LOVE) was willing to suffer for me.

When the words you read make you jot down your thoughts on the other side of the page and then you take a moment to read them. The realization of my own black-hearted self-centeredness washed over me like a waterfall.

I can not say I love anyone if I am not willing to suffer for them. I can not.

I’m rather reserved with my “I love Yous” I am. They don’t come easy for me.

This doesn’t come easy for me either. Every time I have said it thus far in my life has more than likely been a lie. A complete fabrication. A lie I’ve said to make myself feel good and to make you feel good.

The man I promised myself to in marriage. If I am not willing to suffer for him, I am not willing to love him.

Those children that I gave birth to, if I’m not willing to suffer for them. I do not love them.

Those precious souls I’ve been blessed to have befriend this broken pile of flesh, if I’m not willing to suffer for them, I’m not willing to love them.

As painful as all of that was to realize, I knew in the very deepest part of my soul, if I am not willing to suffer for Jesus, I am not willing to love Him.

If I am not willing to take up my cross and follow Him in the path of His suffering, joining in His suffering for me, then I am not willing to love Him.

And if I am not willing to love Him, I am not willing or able to love anyone else.

So my prayer for myself and you this Christmas season is simply to be willing to be willing to love Him as He loves us. To be willing to suffer for Him because that is the path to wholeness, life and love.