What Real Love Looks Like

For several years, five of my dearest friends and I celebrated an annual ritual that still fills my heart with gratitude and delight. Each New Year’s Eve, we trekked to a local horse farm on the outskirts of town, Bibles and journals in tow. Together, we reflected on the year gone by. What had we learned? How had we grown? What hurts had we encountered? Did we need to let go of anything to step into the New Year unhindered? If so, we prayed over one another for healing.

Next we split off for a time of quiet reflection to ask the Lord what he might say to each of us about the coming year, about our lives, about anything. “What would it please you to say to me, Lord?” we asked. This was my favorite part. Generally, I shared a closing word and then we took in the beauty around us. We laughed, took pictures, and drank in the glory of God’s goodness.

As we walked onto the property one year, I found I had nothing to say, no sense of direction, no idea what God wanted to do that day. It wasn’t for lack of asking. In past years I’d approached the day with at least a general theme in mind. But now I was fervently praying underneath my breath, “God, what do you want to do today? What do you have for us?” Nothing.

As we gathered, I suggested we start by asking God what he had for us in that next year. I was breaking protocol and I didn’t know why. And then I started sobbing. Full on, body-shaking, racking, snot-down-my-face sobbing. As clearly as I have ever heard the still, small voice of God in my life, he said, “This is the year I will teach you to recognize and receive love.”

If you had asked me five minutes before, “Stacey, do you know how to recognize and receive love?” I would have answered, “Yes, absolutely. I pour my life out at every opportunity.”

And yet there I stood, naked before the Lord. We both knew the truth. I knew how to love others. I did not know how to recognize when others were trying to love me. I did not know how to receive love. My dear friends gathered around me and began to pray and agree with me. That day was about me. It was a surprise attack of healing and freedom.

The very next night I signed up for eHarmony as a joke. My third match was a man named Ryan. I was match number 1,300 for him. He’d been praying for the woman God had for him for seven years.

We spent our four-month wedding anniversary in the neurology unit of our local hospital getting a brain MRI and a spinal tap for me. Ryan had to wash my hair and walk me to the bathroom.

We’ve been married for seven years now, and I have been disabled the entire length of our marriage.

And yes, that was the year I learned to recognize and receive love, real love.

We often think love looks like fixing people when in reality, it looks more like meeting them where they are. We think love looks like moments of polished perfection when in reality, it often looks more like being met in our mess and vulnerability with wholehearted acceptance and grace. This love—this all-encompassing, flaw-embracing love—heals. It draws us into the fold and writes safety on our hearts. It tells us we are no longer standing on the outside looking in, no longer required to hide our lack. Perfection is no longer required.

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This is the love Jesus modeled, and this is the love the church is called to carry. We won’t find it in an Adele song, but we should be able to find it in a church pew and in the heart of Christians everywhere.

I can tell you this with certainty; love doesn’t always look the way we think it does. Just when we think we have it pinned down, Jesus shows us another facet, another layer of his love. Not just so that we may bask in it and allow it to heal us, but that it might flow from us and heal others.

My journey of learning to recognize and receive love began on a horse farm surrounded by my closest friends. It was there Jesus set me up to set me free. That day God prepared me for the deeper lessons of grace and vulnerability he’s teaching me in my daily walk with my husband. And here, in this daily, messy, imperfect walk, I’m being met with love, real love. And for maybe the first time, I’m recognizing and receiving it.

Stacey Philpot is wife to Ryan and mother to Hayden, Julie, and Avery. She is a writer, goofball, and avid reader. Stacey has ministered for over 15 years to youth and women in her community in order to equip them to go deeper in Christ.

Photograph © Tobias Keller, used with permission