90-Day A Better Me Series

Part II: A Journey of Perspective

What Launches Us Forward: The Stable Foundation

Day 32: The Power of Love

“Love is patient; Love is kind; Love is NOT envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; It is not irritable or resentful; It does not rejoice in Wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

-Corinthians 13.4-13.7

Love is the light that shines through us. Love is the light that lights the tunnel when we are trapped in the dark. In Part I Day 3, I covered THE POWER OF FEAR, and through the next few days I focused on how fear affects our lives. One of the biggest issues is the confusion between love and fear. Many of us have been taught that people were acting in fear-based ways because they love us. Why wouldn’t we be confused? I’ve heard the passage above so many times throughout my life, but NEVER used it as my actual definition of love. Then, when I was in the heart of being degraded and screamed at and the person yelling was telling me they were doing it because they loved me, I looked up the definition of love and this is what came up. I’ve written about how this definition has worked in my life multiple times since I started this blog in 2016. I keep it at the center of what I do, because I am committed to living my life from a loving place. I want the reminder of when I’m operating from love or fear.

Living by this definition of love has empowered my life. It has helped me to see the journey of perspective clearly and with compassion. When we remove the fear from our internal definitions, LOVE is transforming. We become aware of the times we weren’t engaging in the energy of love and when we were in the grips of our fears.

Soul prayers, positive vibes, encouragement, empathy, acceptance, and compassion all come from the power of love.  Just to clarify, I consider soul prayers the prayers that don’t involve our egos. We are not praying for our own way. We trust the love in the Universe to do the job of the light and send love into whatever situation we are praying about. We are not engaging in our fears of believing we know what is best in particular situations.

If we imagine love, joy, acceptance, gratitude, empathy, self-worth, and compassion are light and hate, fear, judgment, shame, and blame are dark, when we shine the light onto the dark we light it up. If we ourselves feed the dark to fight it, we are only adding more dark. We can’t see, we are insisting on our own way. That’s not love. Love is the only thing that will make it possible for us to see. Whether we are facing our own darkness or the darkness of others; the power of love changes lives—Starting with our own!

We all have light and darkness within us. We don’t need to crush, fight, suppress, kill, or smother the darkness. We just need to shine light on it. That is the power of love. I used to think I had to deny the darkness in me (I can still struggle with that from time to time). I would feel shame and guilt for having feelings that were uncomfortable and dark. I fought my shadow instead of wrapping my arms around that piece of me; I condemned her in her darkness. By doing this I just created more. Learning that the darkness blocks me from the life I want was a HUGE step. An even bigger one was not denying when I was having dark feelings and sending light into them. Numbing our darkness is saying it shouldn’t be there and that it’s not apart of us. We are denying the reality that it is apart of us and it needs our light too.

Understanding we can be in the dark and learn from it, is us shining the light on our darkness without creating more dark. We can’t be afraid of what comes up within us. Each feeling has an important lesson to teach us about life. By facing the lesson, we bring light to our darkest corners—We ignite the POWER OF LOVE.

Just for Today

Figure out what is the best definition of love for you. What definition fills your soul when you read it? There are multiple versions of even this Corinthians passage. You want to feel an emotional connection to your definition. It’s not about being right or wrong. If we want to know the POWER OF LOVE, we need to be able to define what that means to us. Otherwise, how would you recognize it if it was right in front of your face?

Thank you for reading!

With Love and Gratitude,

Rachael Wolff ©2019

Did you read today’s companion piece? 90-Day A Better Me Letters Series: Day 32 – Seeing Through the Eyes of Love

Have you missed any day of the series? All you have to do is scroll down to CATEGORIES and pull-up the 90-Day A Better Me Series and 90-Day A Better Me Letters Series and they are both at your fingertips. Happy Reading!