I am Loving - Daily Devotional for Women by Anna Szabo of Online Discipleship for Women

We all want to be loved. But what about being loving? Improving our lovability, aka our ability to be loving, can increase the amount of love in our daily lives. Are you a loving person? For me, loving people is often very hard, especially when my expectations are unmet. But because I abide in Christ daily and absorb His word, I am learning to practice love as a verb. That’s what today’s Biblical devotional will explain. I’ll share my personal journey with you and give you a series of free educational podcasts I produced, all on the topic “I am loving.”

I am Loving #52Devotionals Devotions for Women  by Anna Szabo

My story of love is intertwined with my dehumanizing, devastating, depressing, and dark story of Narcissistic Abuse. The story began when I met Michel on November 13th, 2015. I later found out from a friend that actually in January of 2015, eleven months prior to him meeting me, he saw me on Facebook and was inquiring about me already. He described me as “the girl in a red coat” sharing how later in May of that same year he also arranged to be at the church event my friend and I were attending, but we passed him by, so he didn’t get to meet me.

Eleven months later, we met and talked for about four hours. We discussed our past, he shared about his divorce but never mentioned that he changed his last name after the divorce. Only later, when I heard the house refinancing worker brought documents to get signed by Michel, she shockingly asked: “Szabo? I have Michel Blanco here.” To which Michel started giving a complicated explanation as to why he changed his last name amid his divorce. He also deleted his previous Facebook to start a new life and pretend as if he had never been divorced. I should have paid closer attention to these kinds of red flags.

Michel shared with me how he was a MoneyWise mentor at North Point Church, so we talked about budgeting, as well as celibacy, and our Christian values. I was into Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover and Baby Steps, zero-dollar budget, and debt-free journey. Later, on ur premarital counseling tests and assessments, Michel claimed to be debt-free. Only after our wedding, I discovered months of unpaid mortgage and piles of unpaid credit card bills and insurance.

Michel manipulated me and everyone around me to believe that he was an “amazing godly man.” He cleverly and eloquently love-bombed me from day one. He was attentive, worked at North Point Church, officiated weddings, always talked about the Bible, spoke proudly about being a graduate of Metro Atlanta Seminary, and overall he appeared grounded, solid, wise, and mature.

He appeared to be mentally stable at the time. In January of 2016, he signed us up for pre-engagement counseling called Right Start at Perimeter Church. That month, he proposed to me. On May 14th, 2016 we were married. In September, he filed for divorce saying he wasn’t interested in being married and wanted to be an IronMan instead. You can read about it in my essay called “How Satan Came at Me Looking Saint.”

Michel abandoned our marriage right after our wedding night and was gone most of the time, clocking in 60 hours of IronMan training every week, partying with friends, and doing anything to avoid his responsibilities as a husband and a member of our household, all while I was left alone in the house in the country where I knew no one, and my boxes were not even fully unpacked after moving in following our wedding. Michel was cruel, manipulative, dismissive, abusive, and evil. He did not love me. In fact, he abused me and took advantage of me. But I married him for better or worse and promised to love him.

This devotional is about my ability to love.

What Is Lovability?

I wasn’t loving toward Michel when right after our wedding he began disappearing with hundreds of people to take all-day long bicycle rides from GA to AL and saying that he was not interested in me. It was right after we got married. I felt hurt, rejected, abandoned, betrayed, and suicidally depressed. Michel’s friends called me an IrnWidow, saying that I was married to a dead man. It was true.

When Michel declared “my bicycle is my other wife I cheat on you with” to me, I was enraged and not loving at all. I became angry, bitter, and resentful. Then, I found an online love test.

The test was evaluating one’s ability to love, aka lovability. It had great feedback across the Internet with people saying the test changed their lives. I decided to go for it. I wanted to find out how I was doing because I genuinely wanted to improve. If you don’t know my story, a quick note: no one ever loved me unconditionally, and growing up, I endured years of tormenting and torture. I described those experiences in an essay called “Getting To Know Anna Szabo.”

The love test was assessing lovability skills based on the Biblical perspective on love. My results? Um…

328 out of 1000. 

A few months later, I received a package in the mail from my friend Katharine. I opened the package, and there was a book! It was called “Lovability.” I began to learn that lovability was my ability to love. I realized that loving people had little to do with them and mostly always has to do with me. I learned that lovability is a decision. It’s the decision to be loving toward people no matter what

For weeks, Katharine and studied the book and had long phone conversations discussing in detail how the new love skills were applicable in real everyday life. I knew that love was something I needed to learn how to practice as a verb, consistently.

just didn’t know how.

What Is Love?

I was fascinated with the topic of love. At the time, Michel had already abandoned our marriage and filed for divorce saying that all he wanted was to be an IronMan and compete in Kona. But I wanted to love Michel. I needed to learn how to love him, despite his inability to love me. I had a burning desire to understand the Biblical, sacrificial, agape love and what it actually meant to love unconditionally

John 13:34-35 says this:

A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

John 13:34

No one ever loved me unconditionally, except for God. So, I turned to His Word for all the answers to my love-related questions. Studying Biblical love helped me see where I was lacking. The love test also gave me a printout of my lovability assessment results. It outlined my lovability strengths, weaknesses, and actions to take to improve my love skills. I realized that I desperately needed to sharpen my lovability saw. I began to learn and practice new love attitudes: acceptance, forgiveness, kindness, patience, etc. As I was pondering all my discoveries, learnings, and breakthroughs, later on, I wrote a poem.

"What Love Is" #PoemsFromGod

 Love is not a temporary feeling.
 Love is a commitment and a behavior choice.
 Love is a mindset of intentional healing.
 Love is that kind and patient inner voice.
 
 Love allows for acceptance and forgiveness.
 Love allows for plenty of mistakes.
 Love is an action, it's courageous and fearless.
 Love never fails and never forsakes.
 
 Love always honors and does good to others.
 Love is selfless and expects nothing in return.
 Love perseveres, even when it suffers.
 Love is a skillset we perfect as we learn.
 
 Love is a privilege for those who experience it.
 Love is a journey and a special pursuit.
 Love is challenging but it is resilient.
 Love is the first and foremost of the Spirit fruit.  


8/23/17 © Anna Szabo, JD, MBA

What Is Love Dare?

Love, as I realized, was a verb. It was a commitment to taking specific actions that show intentional genuine care for people. It has their best interests in mind. Right after Michel and I met, he gave me a  Christian movie to watch called “Fireproof.” I remember one Saturday afternoon, I just returned from a beautiful hike at the park with a friend. I settled on my grey leather sectional with my dog Bruno, a fluffy Red-White Cocker Spaniel, and I pushed “Play.”

The movie was amazing and very eventful.

It was emotional.

Michel was officiating a wedding that afternoon but he managed to text with me back and forth about “Fireproof.” It was quite an experience! One takeaway from the film was that we don’t by default know how to love. We have to learn what love is and how to love. And for that, there’s a 40-day journey with a journal.

It’s called “Lovedare.”

It teaches people how to love. It gives a person one new loving dare, aka challenge, a day. And it asks you questions to allow you to reflect on what you’re learning each day from each dare. It’s basically daring you to do things that all teach you how to practice love as a verb. Each love dare is Bible-based, offering scriptures and devotionals to ponder. It’s actually very helpful. I ended up doing it.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 John 4:7-8

When I first saw the concept of love dare in the movie Michel gave me, I didn’t know “Lovedare” was an actual real thing. Later, I realized that doing a daily love dare is a pursuit of many Christian spouses who want their marriages to thrive. I was caught by surprise and very inspired. I wanted to do this love challenge because I loved Michel with all my heart. So, I bought the book called “Love Dare” and began love dares on Michel. Learning how to love my husband was tough after he filed for divorce a few months following our wedding and abused me intentionally. But I remembered that the “Fireproof” movie had a similar circumstance (in some way). The firefighter in the movie did the Lovedare on his wife. She was the one who actually filed for a divorce, too. I thought it was ironic that Michel did it but I had so much desire to love him, the divorce papers weren’t going to stop me. Below is the playlist of nine podcasts I created discussing my Lovedare journey and the details of my learning about love. 

What Does It Mean To Be Loving?

Michel and I are now divorced. In our few months of marriage, I did love dare twice, but his IronMan aspirations prevailed, which I described in an essay called “IronMan vs Marriage.” The blessing of our relationship for me was learning that I was unloving and practicing how to be loving.

Let all that you do be done in love.

1 Corinthians 16:14

I’m far from perfect, but my passion for having an attitude of love and taking the actions love requires of me has not evaporated from my heart. I want and strive to be loving. I’m getting in a habit of asking myself regularly: “Is this loving?” and “What does love require of me in this situation?” When I look back and ponder my marriage with Michel, the love lessons I’ve learned on my Lovedare journey are very clear to me. They are significant, valuable, and life-changing.

20 Love Lessons I Learned In 35 years

  1. Love is a feeling YOU choose, you have complete control over whether or not YOU feel love
  2. Love is an ACTION you practice in the relationship with the person toward whom you experience the FEELING of love
  3. Love doesn’t have any conditions for BEING. If what you feel has performance conditions for the other person to meet, what you feel isn’t love
  4. Love on the inside feels like a commitment, contentment, and care; genuine care for that person you wholeheartedly love
  5. Love on the outside looks like kindness, vulnerability, forgiveness, and acceptance
  6. Love expects nothing in return because you don’t love to get anything; you Iove to GIVE genuine ACTS of love. 
  7. Love never hurts: when we hurt people we are in a relationship with or they hurt us, what causes hurt is not love.
  8. Love is not the same as being IN LOVE. Love is not temporary. It’s an intentional commitment
  9. Love is not chemistry. Love is heart-driven and not hormones-driven
  10. Love is not sexual attraction. Love exists even without sex
  11. Love is not infatuation. Love is born not from a mere short-lived passion. Love is born from a deep sense of commitment and appreciation 
  12. Love from first sight is a myth. Love takes time and togetherness to grow and mature
  13. Love doesn’t keep the record of wrongs. It give endless grace
  14. Love doesn’t keep the record of fights either. It’s not a score book or a checklist. Love is genuine and demands nothing for what is gives
  15. Love is a choice we make
  16. Love is a  skill we obtain, develop, and perfect with time and practice
  17. Love is a mindset of intentional healing, forgiving, and protecting
  18. Love is a feeling we generate within ourselves because WE want TO love, and not for any other reason
  19. Love is a choice we make that requires a selfless sacrifice
  20. Love is always our best choice. Being loving, feeling love, and practicing love are some of the best gifts we can give to ourselves in this lifetime

“I Am Loving” Affirmation

Are you loving? Have you made an intentional and firm decision to love no matter what? If you said yes, memorize the Biblical affirmation I created below and practice it often to remember that your lovability comes from obeying Christ’s teachings about love. 

I am Loving #52Devotionals 

I love people, and my love for them comes from God. 
I was born again in Christ and by His grace I was awed. 
Being a child of God, I practice love as a verb. 
Keeping God’s commands, the wisdom of His word I absorb.

Have you taken the love test yet? Share with me in the comments below about your results and the overall journey so that I can cheer you on. If this devotional was helpful, donate.

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