It is my belief that loving someone

is not the same thing as loving someone while praying they change.

If we are loving someone and praying they change in ways we want them to change, we are loving a version of them we have created, a version of them we want them to be. This is not who they are, this is who we are imagining them to be, in ways we prefer.

Loving someone is loving who they actually are, not who we want them to be and not who we wish they would be.

I believe this is true even if they are in a dark season of their life and we want them to be healthier (in any way.)

I’m not saying we shouldn’t pray for someone’s well being.

I’m not suggesting we don’t pray for someone’s health or safety or anything like that.

I’m simply saying that love loves people where they are.

While they’re there.

However long they’re there.

Knowing they might always live there.

If we love someone yet carry an agenda, hoping or praying or trying to get them to change in a way that they do something

or how they make a decision

or to believe what we believe

or think what we want them to think

or behave in a way that matches our own personal narrative,

we haven’t truly loved them in a real way. We’ve loved them conditionally.

This kind of love says “I love you but I’m praying you’ll change because then I’ll be 100% happy with who you are.”

This message says “you are not enough” or “you’re not quite good enough.”

Real love says I’m 100% here to love who you are. Period.

I also believe that being nice to someone so they will behave a certain way in return is not kindness.

Helping someone so they will help us is not kindness.

Doing something nice for someone and then telling everyone what we did because it makes us look good is not kindness.

Those are business transactions because they involve a return of investment.

Kindness is love in action.

There is no need for a return and no intention of getting anything in return.

It doesn’t depend on the other person’s behavior or personality or mood,

we don’t give to get something out of the giving,

and we don’t take kindness away or stop being kind as a punishment or behavior modifier.

Kindness is being a good person for the sake of being a good person and it is doing good for the sake of doing good.

It is what we do more of

when we are becoming love.

Because love has no agenda

and kindness

is not a strategy.

Let’s all be love and let’s all be kind, it’s all just a choice.