Effie Darlene Barba

God is love.  Throughout my life, I searched for love.  That took me through many stages.  By nature, we are born with a great need to love and be loved.  However, sin leaves us with stony hearts that must be transformed before we can be truly loving like Jesus.  A lesson that often takes a lifetime to learn.  From the moment one accepts Jesus as Savior and Lord, His power indwells us in the form of the Holy Spirit.  Yet, His spirit of love cannot shine forth through the stony fortress around our hearts.  As young, helpless babies need to be cared for and need to be loved, at first incapable of truly loving in return, so are we.  The task of transforming us into the image of Jesus Christ, God takes on.

With great skill, the Master Surgeon chips away at the stony edges of our heart.  At times, we feel our hearts break.  Yet, with gentle and loving skill, God wraps His loving hands around the broken areas.  He opens areas where His light of love can shine forth to the world around us.  Through many stages of love, we must walk to be transformed from need love to being able to truly love.  We face many forms of love-from friendship love, familial love, and Eros.  Each stage for the believer, God uses to transform our hearts, so we may become loving like Jesus loves.

My love for Mom was so combined with my need love; because, I could not see clearly until God had taught me further lessons of love in other areas of my life.  What a wise, patient and gentle teacher He has been!  Therefore, loving like Jesus is an impossible task for our hearts without God’s guiding hand transforming us first.

5 lessons from God Regarding Loving like Jesus

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With all that I had learned of love and forgiveness during the years I lived with Pete, one would think that truth would permeate all the areas of my life.  However, it did not. God, in His wisdom, continued to work on my heart through circumstances, trials, and lessons from Him.

After Pete’s death, I returned home.  During the first months, I traveled back and forth from Mexico.  Completing the tasks set before me, I left the children with Mom.  One month in Mexico, one month in Missouri; I made the arduous three-day drive from Pachuca to Dexter alone.  Emotionally, mom struggled with the task.  Instead of truly understanding her struggle, I was frustrated by it.  Right before I was able to make my final move to Missouri, I lost half of all my money in the 1994 crash of the Mexican markets.  Mom rushed out and bought me a home.  Instead of seeing this act of sacrificial love and kindness, I became obsessed with her words.  She said, “I bought the house because I could not imagine having to live with you and your children.”

Yes, Mom sometimes blurted out words without thought.  But if I had forgiven Pete his moments of violence through understanding, why was it harder to know forgiveness for Mom.

More Lessons in Love and Forgiveness

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With all the brokenness within our human heart, how do we learn to really love with God’s Heart.  He who saw the darkest crevices of my self-exalting sin of pride, the filthy rags I chose to adorn myself, still loved me unconditionally and pursued me relentlessly.  Choosing me to be His own, even knowing every time I would stumble and fail in my futile attempts to love Him as I should.  How often did I fail to bring glory to His name?  Or how often did I bemoan His plan, somehow thinking I knew better than He what was best for me? There was a time, I asked why it was my entire life had been providing care for those with bipolar disorder.  Why was there no one to care for me? So, foolish I was!  For now, I see how truly blessed I have been.

Mom and Pete battled a disease I could not fully comprehend. I must confess there were times when my heart cried out, “Why can’t you get it together? Everyone faces moments of depression and moments of joy.  Just put one foot in front of the other and try harder.  That is what I have to do.” There were moments when their critical words blurted out unfiltered cut deep into my soul.  I wanted to cry out in despair.  For Pete, his disease also came with moments of violent, uncontrollable rage as he reached the peak of mania, just before he plummeted into a deep, dark suicidal depression.  I became entrapped in this rollercoaster of emotions with them.  From love to fear to sorrow, I was the one who had to be strong; but, knew deep within, I wasn’t strong.

Learning to Really Love

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Within our relationships, we come broken, carrying baggage.  Needing to uphold our self-image, we bring all our brokenness to the relationship in hopes to be repaired.  Our needs outweigh our ability to love unconditionally another just for who they are.  Often, our “loving” someone is dependent upon how they make us feel about ourselves.  In other words, we love ourselves more than we truly love the other person in the relationship.  It is no wonder we live in a society where relationships are broken, divorce is rampant, and family arguments rip siblings and parents apart.  Furthermore, we see the divisions in society, where everyone is screaming so loudly against each other rather than to allow grace and civility to reign.  Because of sin, we are a broken people.  So, is there any hope that we can learn to love unconditionally, as God does?

Precisely, that was the problem within my relationship with mom.  I was more concerned with “how I felt” than in seeing the beauty of who she is in God’s eyes. Even when I strove, sacrificially, to do things to bring her joy, I was thinking of me.  Of course, I wanted to feel better about me.  Or perhaps, to declare myself a “saint” by my actions.  Only God, can transform us from the inside out and give us a new heart of understanding, grace and unconditional love toward other flawed and broken people.  We are all broken because of sin.

Learning to Love Unconditionally

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