Today we are ending the first full week of the 16 Days Campaign. Has it been a struggle getting through all this, so far? Have you feared what other shoe might drop in your own life?
“There is no fear in love.” 1 John 4:18
Did you know that the opposite of love is not hate?
The opposite of love is fear.
All that I have presented up to this point in The 16 Days Campaign, aside from my day of thanks, reflects a sense of fear in the lives of the victims and children involved in domestic abuse and violence.
Rather than speak directly about the fear, today let’s take a different tact and speak about the love which is available to all of us, and also a bit of my personal testimony about love conquering fear.
The first love I want to talk about is the love that gets us into the most trouble. It is eros love. This love is more in the sense of being in love, as opposed to sexual desire; although, sexual desire is part of eros love. This love is more concerned with what we can get out of the relationship, true, but at the same time, it promotes the desire to submit ourselves to another, the one we love. This is romantic love, if viewed in its purest sense. While being a very profound experience, it can lead to evil (such as sexual addiction, violence, and pornography) as well as leading to a fully satisfying marriage relationship.
As such, we must take care to keep our eros love pure, respectful, and self-sacrificing rather than self-serving. This is not to say we should submit ourselves to abuse, however; for we must maintain love and respect for ourselves as well as for our partner.
The second is philia love. This is basically a brotherly love, friendship at its deepest sense. It is love between friends and represents one of the strongest bonds between people. According to C.S. Lewis, it is a love that is freely chosen but not necessary for the survival of the species.
And then there is the greatest of loves, agape love, which is a deep caring or godly love for someone even if you do not know them well or approve of their behaviors. This is the God level of love. This is unconditional love. Although it is at the God level, people can and do reach this level all the time. If you can show compassion for your enemy, then you are demonstrating agape love. Moreover, if you can put your differences aside and work on a solution together, amicably rather than fighting incessantly, this too is agape love, because you are putting the needs of the other, the needs of the whole, and the search for an honorable solution before your own needs. Setting your own comfort aside to help another is agape love, and it is a very good and honorable thing to do.
I have not always managed to attain this level of love in my relationships, and I have asked Our Lord’s forgiveness in this matter. My past was so shattered that for a long time, I did not even consider myself worthy of love, let alone worthy of agape love from another human being, and so those who had hurt me in the past, I allowed to continue to hurt me by not setting our differences aside and working on an honorable solution. Please don’t take this to mean that I did not care for the ones who were hurting me. I loved them very deeply and I tried to be in relationship with them, but every day my heart was being broken repeatedly by their deeds and their words spoken to me and against me. I eventually had to make the heartbreaking decision that it was best for my own health to pull back. Because I was seriously ill at the time, I was being told by my doctor, my husband, and others who truly cared about me, that I needed to get the stress out of my life if I ever wanted to heal. Otherwise, they warned, I was on the brink of being hospitalized because I kept getting sicker instead of better, despite valiant efforts where my medical treatment was concerned.
Because of the grave state my own health was in, I allowed my anxiety to reign, and I grew to fear any contact with the people who were hurting me and spreading lies about me. I lost out on working toward closeness and closure with a very dear loved one because he passed away without ever acknowledging the depth of my pain and illness and also the extent of my heartbreak from what he was saying to me and about me. He died without ever really knowing who I am, without him ever putting an end to the lies and hurtful words he was saying. I did not know how to make him stop, even though I tried my best to stay in relationship and to make him understand how much I loved him despite me being unable to physically be there for him (because of the severe extent of my own illness); but when I pulled away from the relationship, it seemed to only antagonize him further into more hurtful words.
This person was an alcoholic. Alcoholism is one of my challenges in relationship. It can tear a family apart, and because of my family history, I have never been able to deal well with an active (or dry) alcoholic. I am not nor have I ever been an alcoholic, but I have been surrounded by alcoholism my entire life, and the culture of fear I grew up in colored so many of my decisions, throughout my entire life. I feared becoming addicted to alcohol and so I have been very careful not to fall into that trap, but more devastating was my fear of becoming addicted to pain pills because of my familial connection to addiction. Because of this fear, I suffered needlessly in pain, crying every night in severe pain, because I did not want to become addicted. I was denying myself comfort; I was denying myself the self love that could have soothed so many of my fears. I did not love myself enough to accept that I deserved to be pain-free just as much as the next person. I also did not trust in Our Lord enough to know that His love could help me out of this cycle of fear and ultimately keep me from addiction.
I did fall into addiction for a short time. This is difficult for me to admit. Before my healing took place, my pain was so severe, I could not stand it anymore. I finally asked my doctor to prescribe something a few months before we left on our mission. Then I turned to these drugs to soothe not only my physical pain but also my emotional pain. It became a vicious cycle, where I would cry myself to sleep because no matter how much morphine or Vicodin I took, the pain never left my body, and I would wake up a few hours later with my whole body shaking because I was in so much pain. It had been years since I had a good night’s sleep, and even though I now had the drugs to combat the pain, my body was so devastated, so ravaged by the illness and unrelenting pain for so many years, that no amount of drugs was going to soothe it.
I finally got to the point that I prayed for deliverance, for an end to it all. If God wasn’t going to give me divine healing, then I wanted to be dead because I could not take any more pain. I stopped taking all my meds, even those for the Lyme disease and adrenal insufficiency and my myriad of other issues, and I fasted for two days, trusting that God would deliver me one way or the other.
I continued to trust day-by-day for a week, setting aside my fears that the pain would never end. I had to let go of the fear that was keeping me in bondage to my pain. Then we enlisted the help of a very mighty prayer team, when my husband asked if our pastor at our new church here in Beaumont could pray healing over me.
It was amazing. I was released. From the illness. From the fear. From the worst of my pain.
I still have pain, but it is not like it used to be. I am old and I am fat and it is winter. Those are three strikes against me at this point. It will take time to get my body back into shape, but I am continuing to trust in Our Lord, and my fear of the pain is gone.
Even though I was raised in an dysfunctional alcoholic home and grew to fear just about everything and I grew up not feeling loved or even wanted, God set me free from all that.
My prayer for you today is that you would ask God to heal you of your deep-set fears.
In His Grace,
Jennifer Joy
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