Don’t Air Your Grievances; Give Them the Air

God keeps showing me good stuff and cleaning me up.

One of the needs I have been concerned about for the last few years is the need to love. A while back, God told me he created the universe for love, and that is consistent with my concerns. Love is important. Apparently, it’s one of the most important things there is. Also, on the occasions when Jesus visited me, the single sensation that impressed me the most was the warmth of the love that radiated from him. I also felt peace, protection, relief, and faith, but love stood out.

God can project his love through you, and that’s the kind of love he wants you to have. It’s hard to make yourself love without his help. We are fully of emotional scars. We feel cheated and wounded, because that’s what we are. Other people and malicious spirits prey on us, starting before we’re born. They get great pleasure from our suffering and humiliation. It’s as if they love bathing in our blood.

Years ago, while I was on my way to a church service, God’s love fell on me, and while it rested on me, I felt new love for other people. It didn’t matter who they were. I didn’t have to push it. The strength came from God. It was a great thing, but I wasn’t able to hold onto it. Ever since then, I’ve been aware that I needed it, and I wanted it back. Many times, I’ve asked God for this.

We live in a society of self-proclaimed victims, and I have been one of them. A person who thinks he’s a victim doesn’t feel obligated to love. On the contrary; victims feel entitled (their favorite word) to harm others. It’s not sin to them. It’s payback, karma, reparations, justice…there is always a name attached to it that makes it sound holy.

I had a warm personality when I was born, but according to my mother, that dried up during my first year of life. She thought it was because of an illness I contracted, but it may have had more to do with the presence of two abusive people in the house. My mother used to find my sister next to my crib, pinching me to make me scream.

In this world, we are taught to hold things against people and to feel cheated. I fell for it. Also, I got tired of opening up to people, only to have them mistreat me in return. People are truly sadistic. Many of them see openness as a welcome opportunity to violate and torment another person. It’s like a windfall to them. They pleasure of harming others is so pleasing to them, they can’t believe their good fortune when they get a chance to cause suffering. I found that I could protect myself by closing up and by using words to hurt back or to attack preemptively. I was rewarded for it, too, because I was funny. People admired me for it. They paid me with attention.

I became like the people from whom I wanted protection. I thought I was a good person because I wasn’t actively looking for opportunities to hurt people, but I was contributing to the atmosphere of defensiveness and malice. In Miami, everyone is familiar with this atmosphere, because people here are very antagonistic to each other. Everyone you see is a threat that has to be scared off or defeated. I believe this is largely due to the ways of the people who have made big cultural contributions here. Before Cubans arrived, the dominant culture was from New York, and after that, the aggressive ways of Cubans dominated our interactions.

I don’t want to be like that any more. I don’t care how other people treat me. I don’t want whatever petty victories they get to be augmented by the larger victory of depriving me of the ability to love.

Over the last few days, I’ve finally gotten relief. I feel like a passage inside me has reopened, and I’m able to let God’s love flow toward people. It’s extremely helpful. It cuts off tension and ugly thoughts before they get a chance to bloom. It’s relaxing. It’s healing to me.

I write about this because people need to know it’s available, and they need to know it’s essential. The Holy Spirit will give you a lot of great things, but without love, they’re very incomplete and ineffective. The propagation of love is the purpose of the universe, so if love doesn’t flow through you, whatever you’re doing in life is a waste of time and a failure.

One of the great things about this is that it helps you forgive nasty people. That’s important, because we swim in a sea of uncleanness and sadism these days. The Internet seems to be growing these things in us. Christians, especially, are subjected to constant provocation. We can’t sit back in self-righteousness, remain angry at unbelievers, and feel like we’re superior. We have to actively, deliberately focus love on them, even if we only do it internally. God is giving me the habit of doing this, and I can feel the pressure and tension inside me abating.

Love is not just a gift we give to others. It’s a gift we give ourselves. I say we give it, but in reality, we just let God run it through us. Love is power and internal healing. It will bring you victory, because God favors people who love, and he opposes people who are bitter and angry all the time.

It doesn’t matter what other people have done to you. To put it bluntly, whatever it is, they probably haven’t beaten you with a scourge and nailed you to a cross. You have to get over it and let it go, and only God can give you the ability to do these things.

I strongly suspect that a lack of love causes physical problems. In particular, I think it causes illnesses in which the body and mind attack themselves. Arthritis. Allergies. Psoriasis. Ulcers. High blood pressure. Heart disease. If you’re full of a desire to harm others all the time, and that desire can’t be fulfilled, surely you will end up harming yourself, simply because you’re available as a target.

My advice is to make love a priority. Quit thinking about what you “deserve.” Quit obsessing on “justice.” If we really got what we deserved, and if God gave us justice, it would be a lot worse than what we actually experience. We belong in hell, so maybe we should stop complaining about slights.

Think it over. I know it will help you.