#IChooseLove: When You Think You Can't Choose Love Anymore

This post from Lydia Thomas isn't one about finding THE ONE, but about loving yourself, and allowing yourself to be loved. It is a choice to act and react with love. It is a choice to love others even when they don't deserve it. It is a choice to allow someone to love you, even when you don't feel like you deserve it. 

#IChooseLove: When You Think You Can't Choose Love Anymore,
​by Lydia Thomas

Throughout November, I found myself hardening. Yet another relationship hadn’t taken off the way I’d hoped. I found myself angry about all of the relationships that hadn’t taken off the way I’d hoped, even the ones for which I’d been responsible for breaking. To make matters worse, I found myself on the receiving end of attention I didn’t want; attention that made me uncomfortable on my best days and dirty on my worst. And when all of the familiar feelings of being simultaneously too good and not good enough for any decent guy tumbled in, I decided I was done.

It’s a frequent cycle for me: getting hurt and deciding I’m done. At it’s heart, I think it’s because for so long I was hurt and couldn’t make the decision to be done with it. My little girl heart swore she wouldn’t take anything she didn’t want to when she no longer had to. It extends past my romantic relationships into my family and friends. Sometimes, I worry that I actually can’t love people when I’m always taking off on them, or that I can’t actually receive love when I don’t really trust others.

In December, a counselor asked me who I thought I would be without having been hurt. I wanted to say what I always say when people ask me that question: that I’m stronger, that it was character-building, that I’m more empathic, that I’m somehow better. But the truth is, it didn’t make me better. Would I have been more confident? Probably. I want to be more confident. Would I have spoken up more? Probably. I want to speak up more. Most of all, though, I suspect I would have been a lot better at loving people and receiving love. I want to be better at the whole love thing.

That’s when I was given some very good news: I can still be what I want to be. If I think I would have been more confident, more outgoing, more loving without the hurt, that’s who I should be. I shouldn’t let what happened back me into a dark, subdued, and lonely corner.

For me, choosing love involves choosing love even when I’m hurting. It means choosing to let people into what I’m thinking instead of hiding out. It means choosing to respond instead of reacting or retaliating. It means choosing to be discerning about when someone is actually harming me or when I just need space, instead of dismissing everyone when they’re just being human. It means choosing to give people opportunities to love me, even when I’m not so loveable.

And it is a choice.

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About Lydia Thomas

Lydia Thomas cannot dance or snap her fingers, but she can sing and write, so most days she feels pretty good about herself. She enjoys DIY projects and crafting, and spending time with family and friends, playing board games and watching movies.She is a bibliophile, cinephile, and pluviophile, and is fascinated with everything from history to science to theology. Her first book, The Field, is available through Vox Dei Publishing, and she’s working on her second and third, A Year with the Baptists and Rachael’s Unfolding.
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Connect with Lydia online: Website * Facebook * Twitter * Pinterest * Goodreads

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Read More from Lydia Thomas in ​The Field

Three women are lured into a forbidden field by a charming prospector and the promise of buried treasure.
Hava, in doing the prospector’s bidding, inadvertently unleashes a battle in the Kingdom, and the consequences of her actions leave her guilt-ridden and isolated. Delilah, daughter of an influential Kingdom ambassador, uses her philosophical wit to recruit treasure hunters to her own cause. Lilly, ever a loner, seizes the opportunity to do something meaningful and be recognized for it.
Through their respective encounters with the Field, Hava, Delilah, and Lilly take up their roles in the age-old battle between the King and those who oppose him in ways none of them had planned.
In the vein of John Bunyan’s The Holy War, Lydia Thomas weaves an allegorical fantasy about redemption and spiritual warfare that will provoke thought long after you finish reading.

Get The Field: Amazon * Barnes & Noble

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