Letting someone love me demands that I allow the person to be part of my life. This is because none can perfectly love what he doesn't have in-depth knowledge of or an encounter with. Take, for example, I love my mum, not just because she is my mum but because I grew up knowing her, seeing her lead our journey of love, and getting to receive true love from her. I know what she likes and hates and this helps me in loving her.
When we allow people to know our strengths, weaknesses, do's, and don't, it gives them the perfect picture of what they should do to us and what they should avoid with us. I understand the fact that letting people into our lives can come with consequences especially if the person wasn't there from the onset. Yeah, people can fake love, and when we give in to it, we end up betrayed but the fact remains that there can't be true love without true knowledge/ encounter. We can only love well, what we know well.
We only have to be careful with the knowledge we give out to the lover.
Secondly, Love is reciprocal. There can't be a complete love story if the two parties are not there for each other. So, in letting people truly love me, I have to give back to them the same measure of love that I receive. Such acts strengthen the lover because none is comfortable with a heart that is neither appreciative nor reciprocating. Outside God, there hardly exists one who can love unconditionally, thus I need to make myself lovable. I can't have an unbearable attitude and expect to be loved that way especially when I am not making efforts to improve. Yes, one can love an imperfect person perfectly but not when the imperfect person is not fighting toward perfection. God himself loves sinners and gives them several graces to repent but He turns away from them if they fail to leave sin.
In conclusion, letting someone love me truly, means making myself lovable, reciprocating back the love that I received, and understanding the fact that none is perfect. We may not receive the magnitude of Love we expect but appreciating the ones we receive goes a long way in sustaining the love story.
—
This is my response to the @shadowspub daily prompt for Saturday 27th August. Should you desire to receive daily prompts from him, simply click here scroll down to the bottom page and enter your email.