This difficult thing called love

As a young adult, I have come to realise that truly loving someone is difficult. Believe it or not, I have never come to fully appreciate how difficult loving someone is until the recent years.

I have been brought up in a family where I always receive from my parents. I have never needed to share anything with anyone and my parents give me what I want most of the time. I do not usually feel the pressure to be on the giving end, in my relationship with my parents.

I have been blessed with friends who understand and are generally easy-going. It is rare that I quarrel or fight with my friends, even close ones. Furthermore, probably most of my close friends have become my close friends because we click. I don't feel that I need to give up or sacrifice much when I am with my friends.

It's easy to "love" someone when they do things your way, when they blend well with your personality. Well, let's just say I have been very sheltered and pampered over the years, by my friends and my family.

 But it's often hard to love when there is conflict of personal interests, especially when 2 people are so often together and yet are so different. People say that opposites attract, and for the relationship that I am in, it is rather true to some extent. Apart from sharing the same faith and having very similar convictions, we have differing ways of thinking and different preferences. The prospect of staying together in the future and having to bear with one another's differences feels rather challenging because I have been so used to having things my way. So each step to love is a step of faith and God-given grace.

To truly love is so tough because love causes one to have to give up one's interest for the interest of the other. It will involve sacrifice. It will involve giving up some of my preferences and the inherent drive of usually wanting things to go my way. It will involve having to be secure in my identity in God because I believe it's not possible to love when one is insecure about him/herself.

Thank God that despite the struggles and countless quarrels we've had in our relationship, we're still pressing on to learn to love. I can't believe that it's only now, at this age, that I am beginning to see and learn to practise what true love entails.