(6-7 minute read).

After work, I often take refuge in my truck. I throw my bag in the back seat, grab my sunglasses, and turn the radio on.

Classic rock reminds me of Dad tinkering around in the garage, fixing his truck or tractor, saving old toys, re-working baseball gloves. Like a surgeon at the tool bench, he delicately superglued all kinds of stuff back together. ZZ Top would play in the back ground.

My own three boys have seen Pops meticulously working on Nerf guns or balsa wood airplanes just to give them a few more rounds of fun. He’s a pediatrician, after all, and has been in the business of remedy for forty years. Broken bones, colds, and ingrown toenails are just part of his game. He restores things.

Recently, I heard an old anti-war song from the sixties. The familiar lyrics ring:

What the world needs now is love, sweet love.
It’s the only thing that there's just too little of.

What a simple lyric! If you slow down and really listen, the amount of suffering and relational pain in the world has been overwhelmingly loud, especially during both the COVID years and the Ukraine War. We are no doubt bombarded with troublesome news at every turn.

In my work as a marriage and family therapist, I’ve seen that families can be war-zones of infidelity, addiction, and divorce. The clanging voices of anti-love abound there also. Clients often share stories of abuse, betrayal, selfishness, or deceit. The innocent carry secret sorrows unseen. Many people confess church-hurt and spiritual abuse. These are invisible wounds that are too deep for words. Clients will ask questions like, “Will God hurt me, manipulate me, or shame me like my pastor did?” With all our pain, we long for someone to comfort us.

To live without hurt in this life is a fairytale. None of us can control when disappointment or tragedy will strike. We cannot persuade heartache to leave our lives, but we can control how we love.

What does love look like?

Preachers can preach, dating podcasts can drop, and very seasoned therapists can give clients research-based tools, but without the consistent hard work of genuine love between two people, true connection and comfort cannot happen. There is no love substitute. Love heals and restores. It touches us deeply in the cracks of our lives.

People know if we really love them or not. We can’t fake it.

Scripture tells us about God’s abounding love. The kind of love that Christ preaches in the gospels is unique. 1 John 4:19 reminds us that “we love because he first loved us”—and this love doesn’t keep score or make transactions. It both risks and guards. It is selfless, yet not completely devoid of self.

The way we love matters. While stories of pain and suffering are increasingly abundant, we each have an opportunity to love in small ways.

1. What does it look like to love myself?

Is it weird to start here?

To be clear, I’m not talking about self-worship—no. Definitely not. The difference is: worshiping self is putting your life, schedule, wants, and desires above everyone else’s—all the time. Loving oneself is about stewarding one’s life for the benefit of others and unto the Lord. For the Christian, it is paying attention to our strengths and weaknesses, remembering our bodies are sacred spaces for the Spirit of God.

We must rethink how to steward our time and energy. Some people need to slow down because they are overachievers, while others need to get off the couch and throw away the potato chips. There is a spectrum here. Wherever we land on the graph, there’s probably something to adjust.

The practice of “habit stacking” makes a good launching point for change. One small step at a time can bring our healthy goals to life. Take baths, listen to music, go on walks, bike with a friend, dust off an old hobby, or even treat yourself to a massage. A little bit of rest goes a long way. We can create healthy routines and rhythms that serve our own mental and emotional health. What is unnecessary or trivial? Just say no.

We should listen to the needs of our hearts and make small changes to our schedules. Ask yourself: do you need refreshment, or must you really attend this event? Is it a requirement, or have you over-committed yourself? Loving the self means creating enough margin in the calendar to have energy for the most important people in our lives.

We need to grow in understanding our own boundaries and limits. It may look like taking a day off, or simply avoiding work on the weekends. It could be developing good sleep hygiene, like going to bed earlier or getting off social media entirely to reallocate resources to real places. For myself, I’ve been away from Facebook for the last eighteen months. It has been a much-needed adjustment.

Self-compassion is rare. What does the person in the mirror need? Loving self is important work, and it is different than self-absorption. In loving the self, we can grow in humility and embrace a lifelong journey of transformation. Soul care is a huge part of what I’m talking about; it is more than rest on the weekends, it is a spiritual understanding of what we most need—God himself.

Christ encourages us to love God fully and also to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. This is a paradox, a revealed mystery. We may know how to fulfill a religious obligation out of duty or even faithfully serve in a ministry, yet there is a daily responsibility to prayerfully steward our callings, work, and rest.

We must dance to God’s heavenly rhythms while we pour out our lives as a deep sacrifice for the honor and care of others.

2. What does it look like to love someone else?

Here we must tap into our physical strength—digging into our inner resources: our time, skills, and most importantly our affection for others. The hardship we all endure is exhausting. Parenting is hard. Marriage is difficult. Dating is tiresome and the single life is tiresome for many. Grief and trauma are complex.

All of the relationships we have with friends and family require work. Relationships are not for the faint of heart. As with a garden, we must weed and plant them, water and prune them. It takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to have healthy relationships. Love is remembering the small ways someone else receives love.

Call a friend you’ve not seen in a while, and ask that person, “How are you, really?” Take a moment to engage with them directly, and schedule something together. You could buy a card, have a friend over for dinner, help with a project, or deliver a cup of coffee to someone.

Love especially looks like thoughtfulness with your ears.

Empathic listening is a significant tool we can use to love one another. It must be an active listening that responds with more than a head nod. That may sound like, “I don’t know what to say, but I’m with you in this,” or, “When I put myself in your shoes, that makes sense.” You could say, “Tell me more, I want to be a safe place for you to share.” To be ‘with’ someone is more helpful than ‘fixing’ them when they don’t want your advice.

Love also looks like listening with your eyes, your body language, and your heart.

In regards to our actions, we may need to take ownership of selfish, me-me-me schedules, or evaluate an addiction that drains the soul and steals intimacy in a relationship. Porn, wine, weed, work, or social media are sometimes the leeches that prevent us from enjoying deeper intimacy. Usually, growth is painful—we can take ownership of our part to play and not give up.

Marriages do well to use a language of love that says, “We make a good team!” “I’m thankful for you, darling,” or “How can I support you through this hard season?” In a recent therapy session, one spouse said with tears in his eyes, “I would not want to go through hard times with anyone else but you.” For example, husbands can serve and love their wives in new, creative ways, responsibly sharing chores and parenting duties. They can also communicate in more gentle, caring ways. Men would do well to provide plenty of validating non-sexual touch and plan romantic getaways and dates.

A timely kiss on the check, a hug, or an encouraging word matters. Try it.

Men can also learn to take their armor off and chance being known (miracles can happen). It's scary at first, but it’s always better than pretending. Emotional intimacy communicates, “You’re safe enough for connection. I trust you enough for my heart to come out of hiding.” One of my favorite authors, Dan Allender, encourages spouses to have openness, curiosity, and kindness with one another—fine ingredients in a marriage.

Also, a wife may need to remind herself of good things happening and decrease her critical voice. Gratitude can change those poop-colored glasses back to a more realistic view of your partner. This goes for husbands too. We must avoid negative filtering. For example, the blame game of ‘always/never’ language will destroy teamwork. After all, our spouses are human too. Women may need instead to encourage their husband’s efforts at parenting, job-searching, coaching, or finances. Furthermore, both men and women can learn to celebrate the differences of sexual intimacy needs. Oh, how different they are (a whole other topic)!

Lastly, we must evaluate our expectations and our preferences. Loving others looks like considering someone else’s likes or dislikes. Maybe eat at your spouse’s favorite place instead of your own. Turn the AC a little warmer or a little cooler. Where can you meet in the middle? Compromise is an essential ingredient in all of our relationships. What does a coworker need? What kind of book does your friend like? What games do your children like? How can you love your family with your hands and feet? Get off your ass and love someone intentionally!

There will always be tension. We are human. Our connection to one another is wonderful and difficult at the same time. We must hold our expectations loosely, and hold on to hope too. We can learn to support others, wait for them, and yield to one another. To quote Sheriff Hopper from Stranger Things, compromise means we will be “halfway happy” at times.

Connection and togetherness take effort! We weren’t meant to do this life alone. We need love.

The broken places in our lives may seem unfixable, but we can’t redeem something unless we boldly name what’s broken. The world we live in is a broken one. Things get moldy, torn, rusty, and frayed, and we must get our hands dirty, and engage our hearts, to mend them.

From a Christian worldview, there is hope in the darkest part of the night—Jesus is coming back to make all things new. He’s coming to restore things with his supernatural love. Our work of continual mending here may seem small, but our inner struggle to love, forgive, and reconcile can go a long, long way, like a dab of superglue on a model plane.

Ask yourself: “What does love look like today?” The world needs more love. Tinker around your life, and see what you can redeem.

Written by Jarrod Justice
Edited by Adam Whipple