The Grace of Love

Love is Grace at its very best! Love comes in all shapes and sizes and in numerous forms. At this time of year, we often think of romantic love, when hearts melt over flowers and chocolates. But love is happening every single moment and deserves to be recognized!

The love I’m thinking about today is more celestial. It’s the love that’s being expressed throughout our day in the form of the air we breathe, the energy in our bodies and the sun on our shoulders. It’s very personal – what would we do without the love that’s expressed in that way?

God’s love is forever and always and that love is with us every minute. I’m sure we have no idea how many interventions are made during any given day that bring us protection and safety, guidance and wisdom, ideas and breakthroughs and much-much more; and we think we’ve done all that on our own!

The most amazing act of love, however, is how our lives got configured initially. The timing of our coming to earth, the people in all the roles that touch our lives, the interactions throughout life and the lessons – the many lessons. We don’t get through life without them!

Caroline Myss (author, speaker, intuitive) calls these relationships our “sacred contracts.” Sacred they are. The easiest and most comfortable ones to understand include the nurturing mother or grandmother, the doting father or grandfather. Those are such gifts and provide such golden moments of memory for our lives. The more difficult and harder ones to understand are the relationships of conflict – the people who know how to push our buttons, the people who treat us not so nicely. As hard as it may be to believe, each of these beautiful souls agreed to make that sacred contract with us – to be present so we could make that “hero’s journey” that Joseph Campbell so beautifully expressed – in order to go within, to find faith and trust, to surrender the ego, to find our inner self – to realize the Divine has been in charge all along…purposefully, beautifully, with loving intent and out of the purest form of personal regard for each one of us. Thank God!

Be blessed on this Valentine’s Day – find love in positively everything. Below are some quotes about love from some of my favorite authors – you’ll see many relate to self-love, which is often the toughest one. Open your heart – allow your beauty to flow. Be amazed and in awe!

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Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us. (Marianne Williamson)

When you’re at peace with yourself and love yourself, it is virtually impossible to do things to yourself that are destructive. (Wayne W. Dyer)

Self-love means caring for ourselves enough to forgive people in our past so that the wounds can no longer damage us – for our wounds do not hurt the people who hurt us, they hurt only us. (Caroline Myss)

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. (Jalalaludin Rumi)

As a doctor, let me tell you what self-love does: It improves your hearing, your eyesight, lowers your blood pressure, increases pulmonary function, cardiac output, and helps wiring the musculature. So, if we had a rampant epidemic of self-love then our healthcare costs would go down dramatically. So, this isn’t just some little frou-frou new age notion, oh love yourself honey. This is hardcore science. (Christiane Northrup, M.D.)

If you knew your potential to feel good, you would ask no one to be different so that you can feel good. You would free yourself of all of that cumbersome impossibility of needing to control the world, or control your mate, or control your child. You are the only one who creates your reality. For no one else can think for you, no one else can do it. It is only you, every bit of it, you. (Abraham-Hicks)

Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the “love” of ego. However, the intensity with which true love is felt can vary. There may be one person who reflects your love back to you more clearly and more intensely than others; and if that person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a love relationship with him or her. The bond that connects you with that person is the same bond that connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs. (Eckhart Tolle)

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep, your eyes close. (Pablo Neruda)

Because I always have a choice, I choose love. (Deepak Chopra)

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage. (Lao Tzu)

One who has been touched by grace will no longer look on those who stray as “those evil people” or “those poor people who need our help.” Nor must we search for signs of “love-worthiness.” Grace teaches us that God loves because of who God is, not because of who we are. (Philip Yancy)

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. (1 Corinthians 13:4)