There are people who are difficult to love and who do everything in their power to show that they do not love you back. The one thing we all want in life is to be loved and understood, and yet when someone offers this to us you would think we would jump at it. But not everyone does.
Some people shun the love of another person because they just don’t have the capacity for it.
I’m not talking about familial love or romantic love or even the love that good friends share, I’m talking about something deeper, a spiritual love that is shared between souls. You have people in your life for a reason, and sometimes it is simply to love them even though they can’t seem to show real love for anyone else, not even themselves.
There is someone I love even though they have told lie upon lie about me, tried to get others against me, and treated me horribly. They call me names, they make fun of the gestures of love I give them, and they make up gossip. It hurts. I have to go to God often about this person, but each time the thing I come away with is that I need to see them as God sees them. God loves the people who are difficult to love. He loves the people who can’t seem to accept love.
When you love someone like this, the people in your life who do love you won’t like how this person treats you. They might even tell you to stay away. And that’s good advice. You don’t need to go in with open arms to the person who will continually make fun of you even while you are hugging them and telling them you love them. Having boundaries is a smart and safe thing to do, and you can continue to pray for this person even as you get distance.
But if you decide to get up close to them, ask God for help. He’ll give you guidance on what to say and when to step forward and when to step back.
The hard-to-love often have barriers, like drinking, negativity, bad tempers… they aren’t warm and cuddly. They are hard and cold, and they want others to feel the harshness of life just as they do. They might be mean to people, or maybe just one person they feel they can pick on.
Maybe you’re the one they pick on.
Maybe they surround themselves with people who tell them they are “right” even though these people don’t really know what’s going on. The hard-to-love people think they have love when they have people who do what they say or agree with them, even when those people have agendas of their own. If they can’t accept love from you, they aren’t to know what real love is from someone else, either.
We all know a person like this. Perhaps we have been a person like this at some point in our lives.
And these are all the things that you need to pray for. As hard as it is. And not in the condescending “what is wrong with them” kind of way but in the way that helps you understand how desperately this person needs your love and prayers and how God might be trying to show you a lesson about love with them.