Tough Love

Love is not weakness.

Forgiveness is strength.

Loving someone does not mean that you have the duty to let them treat you wrong, in love forgiveness is essential but that doesn't mean you just let someone that you love do what they'd like and leave you in the dirt half the time.

What I am trying to say is that I am learning what love is about. It's been a constant thing since I was about 13, but lessons lately have been very poignant lessons that hold more truth than any of the lessons I have learned before.

I know that love is probably the strongest force in the world, I also know that love is what drives my getting up and laying down. My love for what God has given me, the love for Him to get up and see what he has to offer that day.... and throughout the day the way I step are towards the things I love. One way or another, love is the force that drives me.

I believe in love to be the only thing I want to define me. On my stone (if I have a stone) I want it to ready Darby [Barksdale] July 11, 1989--- XXX "She Loved". That's it. And honestly, I feel that you may be able to say that about me now.... I may have not loved what you agreed with, I may have not loved in the way you want me to love, but I loved and I do love, every day.

With that being said, love has lead me to some really rough decisions, experiences, and heartaches. When I love someone it isn't just a love that I turn off.... and up until now, it was a love that would overcome and suppress any negativity involved in anything else. I loved someone, ergo, his hurtful ways and such were just issues I had to love harder, and forgive. But you see, my love was not big enough to change him. My love couldn't just keep forgiving him with the thought he would change, because he never knew any different. I wasn't helping that cause either. By sitting back and just letting him hurt me, and by forgiving him for every shard that went through my heart, he never knew the pain I was in and he never knew that change was the only way to mend all of it. . .

So. I have come to a conclusion today about love: I can love. I love good. I can forgive better than most. But I can not love something that won't take me and my love to heart and cherish it. I have to love in the way parents have to love sometimes: with showing consequences of actions. There are a few ways that parents do this, one is to walk your child through their actions, to talk it out, to hold their hand and work through the why's and why not's of the consequence.... or there is the tough love, the "you did this, you have to figure it out on your own" way. All my life I have chosen to lead people through the consequences of their hurting me in a way that I just wanted to love them through it.... but as most parents find out (I guess), you can't always love people through things. You have to trust the good Lord to lead, and love, and have mercy, and change people's ways.

So there. New chapter in Darby's infinite book of love.... Tough Love.