Choose Love Over Hate

If ever the world needed LOVE in its truest form, it is NOW.

The Heartlifter’s Journey offers each of us a pivotal “to choose or not to choose” moment. We can choose a teachable spirit or choose to stay the same. We don’t have to forgive. We don’t have to heal core wounds. We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do. That is the power of possessing a free will. Viktor Frankl once said, ‘between a stimulus and a response is a space.’ I call the a ‘sacred space.’ That sacred space is a tipping point. It is a “critical moment in a complex situation in which a small influence or development produces a large or irreversible change.” Life’s multitude of hurtful moments—whether mean or well-meaning—leads to that one moment in that one sacred space.”

—Overcoming Hurtful Words: Rewrite Your Own Story¹

Let Love In; Let Love Win

This is a monumental week in our nation.

May we all commit to choosing love over hate.

In Overcoming Hurtful Words, I offer some difficult questions:

1. Do I hold on to the hate and anger I feel for this person who hurled hurtful words at me?

2. Do I want to make the hard choice and [hopefully] talk it through with them? Even practice forgiveness with them?

3. Do I want to dig deep and practice new healthy behaviors?

If I do, I’ll have to commit to the heart work of transforming old, unhealthy behaviors [childish ways] into new healthy behaviors.

You might feel, “It’s not worth my time and energy.”

I get that. I do.

And that might be true in some cases.

But, with the relationships near and dear to our hearts, I hope it will be worth your time and energy.

You might feel, “It won’t matter what I do, nothing changes.”

I get that. I do.

And that might be true—I’ve learned that not everyone changes.

But, today, as the week unfolds before us, I encourage you to give the words of 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 some time and energy.

Please read it in several different interpretations. I use biblegateway.com.

After reading, come back and share what stood out to you.

After Rob and I read it in the morning, we choose one of the verses to meditate and practice.

The Love Challenge

In my own personal life experience, learning the language of love is the hardest language to learn.

Its depths and breadths sometimes seem like a deep abyss.

Living it out in real time with real people—well, I think we all know the challenges.

The same Paul that wrote 1 Corinthians 13 also wrote Ephesians 3:14-19 (The Living Bible):

Like Paul says here, I want each one of us “to feel and understand how long, how wide, how deep, and how high God’s love really is; and to experience this love for ourselves.”²

I’m on a personal quest to revisit my work in Overcoming Hurtful Words to expand my understanding and knowledge of the language of love. I began my podcast in 2018 talking all about it. Revisit these early episodes:

1. Episode 9, Yes, I Want to Be Happy

2. Episode 7, Am I Whole?

3. Episode 12: Choose Healthy Over Unhealthy

4. Episode 13: How To Pray Through and Stay With the Difficult Places of Life

Today, I’m inviting you to learn the language of love with me.

Is there some aspect or question or confusing thoughts about Love that you’d like to talk through?

Let me know.

I’ll be waiting for you, right here.

1. Rardon, J. (2017). Overcoming hurtful words: Rewrite your own story. Worthy Inspired.

2. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians%203&version=TLB.