Sometimes I worry about the way others think. I love everyone I encounter and I worry that makes my love less valuable. But believing it is less valuable than it is, is insulting.

Sometimes I love people who don’t love me back. Sometimes those people simply don’t understand my love, others just blatantly don’t accept it. But because of the way I love, unfortunately, I, in part, desire that they would love me back and when they don’t, I worry.

I want to explain myself. I want to somehow make my love make sense to them. And way too many times, I’ve tried to. But if someone isn’t going to love someone else, sometimes it’s not something you can produce no matter how hard you try.

I don’t see my definition of love as an opinion. It is fact. When people don’t understand what love is, all I want to do is tell them with excitement as my eyes light up and my heart swells. Because knowing the truth about love not only sets you free, but the joy in it is bigger than any other form of happiness that is often temporary in concept.

I had many people in my life who’ve chosen to walk away because my love is something they lack the capability to understand. No matter how hard I tried to explain myself, my words often pushed them further away and I failed time and time again. Every one of them still carries a small pocket of space in my heart.

But my heart is huge. My heart has millions of tiny pockets and most don’t understand the way it works. I am reminded of Jesus and how many people assisted in putting him to death in a hateful and terrifying manner, simply because they couldn’t understand. So, how can I allow myself to be hurt by a person’s simple lack of understanding when no one is physically beating me or wishing death on me?

A few years ago I had a friend who took my love and in the most ignorant way, misunderstood it. He did so because his world didn’t have much love, his history didn’t prove an abundance of love, and our society claims love between a man and a woman as romantic as opposed to its true and large form. This false image of love is a result of a continuing lack of understanding God. If we aren’t of the same DNA, love can’t be so big, it must be romance.

His words hurt. Not only did he misunderstand my love, but he misunderstood me as a whole. He took my listening ear and generous heart but had no desire to give me the same in return. And normally I wouldn’t expect that from anyone, except he pried and asked for me to open up. As much as I tried to tell him he wouldn’t understand, I started to open up my heart in all its depth… but he couldn’t carry the weight of the deepness within my soul that God gifted me with. So, he got frustrated and didn’t know how to love me back without sex or romance.

This is what is missing sometimes in the heart of many. Love is unconditional, but people have conditions. They earnestly and even subconsciously seek love, but when a person has never received real love, they never learn to give it. But how did I learn?

I grew up in a world where I believed that I was on my own since I was a toddler. I believed that no one was to be trusted in such a way that I didn’t tell a soul about molestations, sleeping in a living room surrounded by drunk and high party-goers, being scared out of my mind by a crazed man who beat my mother… I didn’t tell a soul because I wholeheartedly believed that not a soul would save neither me nor my brother.

So, it may not have seemed like a childhood in which no one loved me, but it was a world in which I believed no one loved – period.

I often wonder how I came to know love in the first place. It’s what intrigued me about God and His existence as a whole. People of all generations or backgrounds have their theories, but the one thing that always points back to God is Love.

Our universe is comprised of an energy that is constantly working. This energy, in all its tiny miniscule particles, works together in unity with each other even as we, as bodies in this energy, fight against each other. Love is a unifying and beautiful energy. It is that same energy that is constantly working all around us, especially when we can’t see it.

I don’t simply see love as an emotion. It isn’t a simple form of sensitivity. Love is huge and powerful and always at work around and within us. Love promotes forgiveness, joy, respect, and a non-judgemental attitude. Love keeps us longing for one another because there are commonalities that we relate to and the uncommon are appreciated. Love is humility. Love is strong and devoid of hate, anger, resentment, or sadness. Love is perfect, because love is God.

Jesus spent his days with common, broken people. He ate at the same table with people who were shunned from normal society. He healed lepers that no one would touch. He broke rule after rule because no rule is more important than love for one another. He forgave and had mercy on people that others would have stoned to death. Jesus came to show us what love really was. His story, even for a non-believer in his divinity, should be an inspiration and a motivation to be the best human being we can be.

It is a shame that we’ve lost touch with the truth in love. It’s a shame that there are millions of people who refuse to pick up The Bible because they are anti-religious. The Bible is the greatest book ever written and if those millions of people had an open mind and a willingness to just read the story of Jesus Christ, maybe love wouldn’t be so lost. Maybe, if we got to know love, we wouldn’t be struggling so hard to find a love that doesn’t exist. But it seems we’ve become blind to the love all around that is so much bigger.

Perhaps we would learn to forgive, find joy, have respect, or love before we judge – before we shut people out. Because the people you turn your backs to could be changed forever if only you knew how to love them and receive their love in return.