Spiritual Perspectives
Loving Others — The Way They Need Us to Love Them

Kristen Pikaart
Special to The Independent

Since I'm home on maternity leave, most of the reflecting that I'm doing is in the context of a constant line of spit-up running down my shirt and in the very brief spurts of quiet that I get.

The baby is seven weeks old, and the "big" sister is three and half. We have to be almost constantly vigilant to ensure that the big one doesn't "love" her little sister to death. Hugs become half nelsons, kisses become full-face assaults and soft caresses soon morph into loud thumps on the baby's stomach.

We've tried time-outs ad nauseum, every incentive program in the book, and in our weary moments, plain old yelling.

Yesterday, my husband was trying to talk to the preschooler about these assaults. "The question is not whether or not you love your sister," he began, sounding already like some sage teaching his eager student. "We know that you love her. But the question is, how does she want to you show her your love."

At that point, the sermon became alive to my listening ears, while Daya's face got that blank look that I've noticed in the pews from time to time when I'm preaching. "You have to love another person in the way that they need you to. Not in the way that you want to."

What a profound concept that is, but so far from a preschooler's egocentric world. Six years into marriage and I am only just beginning to grasp that very basic truth.

This is also the season of weddings, that time of new and exciting love, which puts the same question to mind: "How do we love?" Or better said, "How do we love so that the other can receive it?"

It seems that we are all wired early on to know how love looks and feels in particular ways. For one person, love looks like silence, for another it looks like loud animated conversation. For one it feels tangible like a touch, or a gift, for another it feels like an unexplainable emotional closeness. For one a bouquet of flowers is a powerful expression of love, for another, that same vase is merely a nice decoration.

We are so often frustrated in our attempts to love another whether a sibling, a parent, a child, a friend, a colleague, a partner because what we intend to be loving is not felt to be by the receiver. We give the DVD player for a Christmas gift because we secretly want it, rather than the gift that she actually wants. We fume when our words are misunderstood or misconstrued. The backrub that he would want after a hard day just feels irritating to her. Like my preschooler, we are very often egocentric with our love, which is really just fine for a three year old, but not so fulfilling for an adult.

Love, real love, is known by its humility. It means giving up my own vision of who my partner should be and to let him walk his own journey to put him in my mind where he is anyway in God's hands and not in mine. That is humility. And it is maddeningly difficult.

Jesus told his followers to "Love one another as I have loved you." When I heard that as a child I always assumed he was talking about quantity: Love as much as I love. That seemed nearly impossible. Now I think he was talking about the quality of his love. Love one another with the sort of love that you have experienced from me. Jesus, as we read about him from the stories passed down from the people who met him, or better said, who were met by him, was the example of perfect love.

If you have been to any weddings this summer, you've no doubt heard that old wedding stand-by, I Corinthians 13, the chapter about love. I've heard it read at so many weddings, my eyes usually glaze over, but it's actually such a powerful lesson about the nature of love: "Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant... it does not insist on its own way..." The basic lesson? Love is not about the giver, it is wholly oriented toward the receiver. In other words, it is absolutely not about me.

It's about showing loving mercy to the people we might find very distasteful. It's about sticking it out with our loved ones when they are not their best selves. It's about asking until we really get it, how another knows love. It's about setting down judgments on our neighbors and meeting them where they are.

Now, this might not be a love that a preschool can, or even should attain. Kids are supposed to be the centers of their own worlds. This kind of love is pretty grown-up.

Rev. Kristen Pikaart is the chaplain for the Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care System. She can be contacted a (505) 863-7041 or kjpikaart@yahoo.com.

This column is the result of a desire by community members, representing different faith communities, to share their ideas about bringing a spiritual perspective into our daily lives and community issues.

For information about contributing a guest column, contact Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola at the Independent: (505) 863-8611, ext. 218 or lizreligion01@yahoo.com.