Share the Love Challenge

My “Share the Love” Challenge:

There are more songs and movies about love than any other topic. Remember Huey Lewis and the News? “The Power of Love?” How about the country song, “Love me?” Something newer? How about Flavor of Love with Flavor Flav? Too much Rap.  OK, I’ve got it….FROZEN.  The wonderful Disney cartoon, Frozen, where we learn that love chases away fear. Sleepless in Seattle, where love brings strangers together.

The Beatles really had a few things figured out, surprisingly. With the image of John Lennon in bed with Yoko stuck in my head, I always thought crazies. BUT the more I consider the implications, the more I understand that, “All you need is love” and “Make Love not War” might be more than trite phrases.

Have you ever felt loved? Feeling unconditional love really is something special, when you know someone loves you no matter what, just because you are you–That is empowering.  “On the Wings of Love,” we do soar. We can do anything. We can be more than we thought we could be–just because someone loves us.  Empowerment. True. Think about it. Test it out.

I met my dear friend Marcos Prieto when he served as my Mission President. Which means he was a chaperone of sorts for around 300 missionaries serving in his native country of Brazil.  (difficult job) In our first interview, after we got to know each other in my broken Portuguese, he told me he loved me.  I looked into his older, kind eyes and saw that it was true.  This man loved me. And I knew he always would. And then he told me to be obedient.  And I was. Because he loved me.  Because in that moment, I was reminded that God loves me too.  And over the years, I have received moment after moment of comfort knowing that someone on the earth loved me like that.  Just loved me, because I’m me.  Love empowers. Love changes.

I’ve come across more people who can love me like dear President Prieto. But they are rare.  Maybe I am difficult to love? Or we all just have a difficult time loving.  How many people do I love like that?

This principle of love has potential to change the world, every person in it. Am I oversimplifying a solution to all the world's problems? No, I'm not. It really is that simple.

Children need all sorts of things, but mostly, they need love.  Criminals need love, probably more than most. The elderly need love. Middle schoolers need LOVE. High schoolers need love. Really, everyone on this blessed planet of ours needs love and more of it. In these days while it seems that the hearts of some have gone cold, when we get honked at, shouted at, cheated and robbed by perfect strangers; the solution is love.

This morning, I got a loud, abusive phone call from a lady at a rental car agency, accusing me of stealing their car. ( I already have a car, thank you) But I was left shaken and vulnerable and attacked.  And then I got a phone call from a friend, who loves me, who has a gift of showing love. That balm of her love sealed off all the hurt, and I was just left with the joy of friendship. Love empowers. Love changes. Love heals.

When Corrie Ten Boom was approached by the Nazi jailor who killed her sister and abused them cruelly in the concentration camp, how was she able to forgive him? God sent love to her heart, and when she took the reformed jailor's hand, she saw him and loved him with the love that God feels for each of us. Love did that. Love heals.

When we share and feel more love, we are changed, empowered and healed.  I can think of lots of problems in our world today. Besides global warming or the polar vortex, I think love can fix just about all of them. Feeling love and experiencing the lack of love has made more of a difference to the human race than any other thing. Is that statement too sweeping? Too bold? Consider any problem in the world and determine how love or lack of love played a part.

And it starts with you and me, right now.  Because it has to be shared one by one, person by person; whether stranger or friend, expressions of love are individual.  And if we all start today, and make feeling and sharing more love a priority, that ripple effect will begin to work its magic. Love shared today can eventually go from person to person across the globe. The world seems small when you think of reaching out one by one. We can create a culture of love, an expectation of love, an immediate response of love.“We are the World”

The scriptures teach us that Charity is the pure love of Christ and that it never faileth.  I say we give it a try.  Consider this beautiful challenge,

“This year, mend a quarrel. Seek out a forgotten friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a letter. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in word and deed. Keep a promise. Forgo a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Apologize. Try to understand. Examine your demands on others. Think first of someone else. Be kind. Be gentle. Laugh a little more. Express your gratitude. Welcome a stranger. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love and the speak it again.”
Howard W. Hunter

And if you are having a bit of trouble feeling the love, having a difficult time making your heart feel what your head wants it to, remember this important truth.

“Our Heavenly Father loves you–each of you.  That love never changes…it is simply always there.”  Thomas S. Monson

Love is the new Yoga, the next self-help solution, the greatest trend of all time.  Go for it. Work for more love. Fill your bucket lists and resolutions with goals for love. It is the single most important, life-changing goal. I’ll join you and start here at home, with my neighbors, with my town, even someone difficult to love; You start with yours, and some day maybe our shared love will  travel from person to person and meet somewhere across the globe in the heart of a perfect stranger.

Look for Kindness

I perch on a bar stool at our counter-height table, Facebook scrolling over the screen of my iPhone. I’m breaking an unspoken rule I gave myself to avoid Facebook on the Sabbath. Not because the Spirit hasn’t prompted me to post things on Sunday, He has, but because most of the time Facebook isn’t so much about sharing something spiritual, as mindlessly occupying my otherwise anxious mind.

My anxiety needs outlets, something other than my life to worry over. Before Facebook I made up stories. Since I’ve called myself an author that’s changed. I reach for escape and instead of my place of refuge—my story world—I find a wall of worry. Is this the right plot choice here? Is that really what that character would do?

So I’m latching onto Facebook.

But what I want to be an escape from worry this morning is the opposite. The screen plays stories I’d never thought to write. Horrible things. Angry things. Selfish, frivolous things.

Until what I really want is reassurance.

I want to know that love is still real. That the world isn’t falling apart around me. That my babies will grow up safe and hopeful. I want to know that I’m worth something, even here, in my grubby t-shirt and yoga shorts, doing the very thing I told myself I wouldn’t do today.

I’ve gotten off to a real bad start this morning.

It’s the tiny posts: a quote from a prophet, a scripture, an honest, heartfelt status update. Blips. My mind shifts and God reenters.

I open up my scriptures in another app and try to focus. I pray silently, right there, my head hunched over the table while my daughter pecks at breakfast and my husband strides through with his suit-coat and shoes in one hand.

Words come. My own, maybe. A thought drifting through my head.

Look for kindness. Look for joy.

Is that what I’m supposed to do?

I don’t know where to look. Not on Facebook. In that sea, there is kindness, I know it. But today is worse than usual. Something happened. Something big and evil. And it’s all over Facebook. Plastered.

Tell me where to look for good.

A prompting? Most likely. I open up my photos.

Look for kindness. Look for joy.

Yesterday, we went to the river with extended family we hadn’t seen in a long time. The kids wanted to get in and one cousin, a twelve-year-old girl, took my two-year-old daughter’s hand and waded with her into the water. I caught the moment on screen, but profoundly enough, the gesture is hidden by the foliage of the trees.

You have to look to see it.

My daughter climbs on my lap to see the photos. I flick through them, but soon go back to that one. It's like I've emerged from deep water and taken my first full breath of the day.

I cannot change the world. I cannot fix the things that are falling apart, or unfair, or bad. I cannot take the hurt away.

But here in my own little world, God is still at work. He’s in my niece's hands. He’s in my toddler’s insatiable chatter. He’s in my husband, off to church before the rest of us, calling goodbye from the doorway.

He is at this table, in this room.

A perfectly ripe nectarine for breakfast. A smile from my son. A tiny post of something good. A scripture. A prayer.

An answer. 

Look for kindness. Look for joy.