Is love REALLY Good?

Love sucks.  I would almost venture to say that Love is the most powerful thing on earth.  Love makes you crazy, blind, and sometimes stupid.  Whether it is a love for a partner, kids, friends, nieces and nephews, siblings, or parents.  Love suck.
When you love someone, you want what makes them happy and taken care of.  Sometimes with kids or nieces and nephew, love means saying no.  With parents, friends, and even partners sometimes love means being honest even if it means maybe hurting that person or risking that relationship....with my parents, I'm not so good at this.  With partners or potential partners, love sometimes means that you have to say no to yourself.  Do or say what they need from you in that moment instead of thinking of yourself.
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I have always loved 1 Corinthians 13 from the bible, although I don't think I have been very good at living it.
1 Corinthians 13: 4-8

"4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails."

Love in real life is hard, and when you find it....it's awesome...but it sucks if you are waiting for it or can't seem to get it right.

Love being patient and Kind...I got that.  Doesn't envy, boast, or dishonor...those are sometimes harder.  Never proud, always trusts, always hopes...sometimes feel impossible.
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I have heard that this chapter could be applied to God because "God is love.  And that seems to work.  Of course God is all patient and hopeful and kind and all that....he knows how it ends.  So if whoever he loves isn't talking to him now or things are going shitty for them or something....no worries...God knows it will end well because he's been there.

But what about people? People like me and others who aren't God?   We don't know how it will end.  I trusted and hoped for many more years with my father figure, hoped and trusted that he would see me get married, have kids and maybe be like a second grandpa to them.....but in the end....he didn't even get to see me graduate College because he died 6 months too soon....Six months.

I have spent way too many nights wondering if I would still have a best friend in the morning, or if I would ever get to talk to her again because she had been gone for days and the last thing I heard.....well wasn't good.

I have spent most of my life wondering out one could claim to love yet abuse and (at least seemingly) hate the very person they claimed to love.  "She" said she loved me, but the reports say she abused me and rumor has it she said for years that I was dead.....I guess in her eyes I might have been.

I have cried over people who say that they love me, but act as if they hate me or a part of me.
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People say they love you, but then the abuse you (physically, emotionally, mentally/psychology), they manipulate you,, they judge and cast their verdict on you....that can't be love.
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Everyone says that God is love.  But where is he went the abuser attacks, or the young girl is taken only to be used....or when that same girl must endure horrors so that she may be used some more?

I know I can't really pin this one on God....but...where is the love when a person who claims to be following God and living out his love treats someone else like crap because they don't fit into their precious little box of how the world and people should be?
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Love I know exist, I feel it....and everyone says it's this great thing.....but is it really?  Is love really good....or is love just this complex mess of emotion that no one can control or really deal with making it potentially dangerous and volatile?   Can we expect good things if someone says that they love us?  Or should we really be running for cover when that say that because you never know if what will happen next will be good or bad?
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Should we run and hide from love?  Would things actually be better that way?

The Sunning

I just watched the movie called The Shunning based off the book by the same title by Beverly Lewis (for those that don't know she is a Christian author), evidently Lewis grew up in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, aka Amish (which explains all her Amish themed books). 

But anyway.

I have never read the book, I looked at it once when it came out a few years ago and I didn't read it because It seemed boring to me.  But for whatever reason I rented it from red box today.  And right now, I am really glad that my parents are on their business trip and the girls were at school; because I cried my eyes out....and I am not all too sure why.

I know that I have fears that I don't like expressing (even if I try to tell myself that they are probably exaggerated), and I know I will never have the story I wish I had, or many of the answers that I long for.  And all of that could have played a role, because this movie (though set in an Amish world) parallels my life in several ways.
1. I'm adopted
2. I have been raised in a sheltered (as much as they could), and religious family
3. My parents didn't tell me the truth about my life and my past really until I was 18-21 (and only because I fell upon it and finally got the courage to ask them about it)
4. and I have a fear of essentially being shunned by all those I love and care about in life.  And even though I know now, that I won't loose "everyone"; I still fear at times I will loose the people who despite everything I still try to hold onto the most....my parents.

The movie and I assume the book tells a story of a girl who's birth mother was too young to really give her the life she wanted for her so she gave her to an Amish family,  a loving gesture.  Later in the movie, Katie (the main character) is shunned (basically cast out from the Amish world she knew).  My story's beginning was definitely not as loving and poetic as a young mother choosing to do what is best for her daughter instead of just thinking for herself.....Ok so maybe I need to give my biological mother so slack...she may have wanted what was best for me but didn't know how to go about it or maybe there was a part of her that loved so deeply that it wouldn't let her take the steps necessary to give me the story I now wish I had.  And as far as my ending, obviously I'm not there yet.  But I do have a fear of being cast out of the world I've known (and that isn't just talking about my "family")...and to some degree I have had/felt that experience....where the place I once called home became a place that I hated being at and only brought me a feeling of being diseased and feeling as if anyone in that place ventured to reach out to me, they would "catch it" too and would have to be cast out with me (which is the basic idea of shunning.  If someone is shunned, others in the community aren't allowed to speak or do anything with the shunned or that too will be shunned, according to the movie anyway).  But my fear of being shunned by my family...my mom, dad, brothers, and loosing contact with my niece and nephew (the ones I hang with most)....makes me hide.  And I know that is not really healthy for me, but I'm scared of having nothing...not really.
ANYWAY
this isn't about me, it's about my reaction to the movie.  I cried like a baby and basically thinking the whole time of the idea of shunning and my dad.  Why I care so much about the man, I don't know.  He has always had the reaction of Katie's father in that the past is in the past and right is right and wrong is wrong and nothing would get him to change his mind.  And he has hurt me (emotionally) more than once but because I wasn't/ and maybe still not ready to speak truth to him because of my fear....I have remained silent and attempt to hide the pain so he wouldn't see.
Shit.  I don't never know where I was going with all this....so whatever.
bye