“Love. A word that comes and goes. But few people really know what it means to really love somebody”. The first three lines of Love by Kirk Franklin. These three lines have so much depth and sad reality in them that they actually cause one to ponder on what love really is. Some months back, in a class I took, we were asked the question of what love is. The majority of the answers can be condensed into this one statement, “accepting a person for who they really are, and trying to make the best out of their real selves”. I agreed wholeheartedly with this definition.
In a movie I saw a while back, the question of why we keep secrets from the people we claim to love was posed and the answer given was that it was due to the fear that they won’t love us as much anymore. This, I also fully understood. But it didn’t have to be the way of things. The entire point of love is taking and accepting someone the way they are, warts and all. Someone once said that what she used to do was to show her guy friends that were interested in dating her, the bad sides to her first. And if they not necessarily liked it, but liked her enough to tolerate it, then she definitely would give whoever it was, a chance at a relationship with her. This made sense in a twisted way but I just did not subscribe to this method.
She was right though. Using roses as an example, this very loved flower comes with such beautiful petals but it also comes with its fair share of thorns. However, this does not change the fact that people still love roses like crazy till this day. We love its petals and deal with its thorns because of HOW MUCH we love the flower. In the human sense, this means that we love their virtues and deal with their thorns because of HOW MUCH we love the people. It’s simple really. If you love my flaws, there’s no force on the face of the earth that can make me doubt that you love my virtues, which in a nutshell, means that you love ALL OF ME.
When you’re with someone who cannot love, or at least tolerate your flaws, you just never get to be yourself with the person and the person does not get to know the real you. But when someone loves your all of you, your curves and edges and perfect imperfections, in the words of John Legend, then the whole of you is safe in that kind of love. It’s kind of the way Jesus loves us. Love my thorns, love my petals, love all of me.
Article by Soomto Ajanma
