love

I don’t know how to love. I wont make excuses, but I will explain – I don’t think most men know how to love, and to take that further I don’t believe black men have a clue. To start off I am black or African American and if I was to get specific my father is from South America – Belize to be precise and my mother is from Harlem so I have some authority to speak from the “Black” perspective.     I have been married for 15 years and I am a father, yet I am confessing: I DON’T KNOW HOW TO LOVE. As a mature adult I am just beginning to understand “love” as an eternal thing – it is constant, but not stale: meaning its form is forever changing so when I was 22 as a newlywed my expression of love for my wife has to grow now that we are in our late 30’s. I learned how to respect a women from my mother and grandmother, but my fathers relationship with my mother was dysfunctional and he passed before I got married so I wasn’t able to receive that advise from Dad even more I never seen his example of love for a women.     Men are not wired to easily express love like women – this is not an excuse it is just by biological make-up women have nurturing built in so love is more natural to them. Men by nature have to make a conscience decision to decide to love in the true sense of the word; in short men are more designed for protection and providing not the emotional attention and care that love is. I am learning to love from examples such as my pastor Ron Carpenter, and it seems the more I discover the complex composition of my beautiful wife’s personality and soul the more I am faced with the reality that I don’t have a clue how to love. When my father gave in to drug addiction he negated his authority failing to exemplify love for a women for me (his son) to repeat with my wife. I learned early on that our pop culture will totally screw you up in regards to expressing love. Culture is why I say Black men are the most clueless when it comes to love, because media teaches them to objectify there women and that being a man – is not showing love at all. Government slowly replaced the Black man in the home leaving his women with a false sense of independence, and we in some way all feed off this stereotype. Love is an eternal thing perfect love cast out all fear so it is with this understanding that I decide to conform to the image of the Anointed ONE: Christ and totally let go of what I think being a man is and allow God’s spirit to teach me how to love. My wife will suffer if I do not operate in my role as High Priest and cover my wife and LOVE her as Christ LOVED me. I now know I must become nobody to allow the perfect eternal thing we call LOVE to have its way. I love my wife with what little I know, and I may know a little more then most, but not nearly enough to love her with the fullest of what love is.