When my good friend Chautona releases a new book, she goes over the top to make it fun!
Readers will find this a deeply-moving, thought-provoking book, and I know Chautona felt those same emotions while she was writing it. I asked her to share a bit about it here, and in true Chautona Havig style. she sent me a Top Ten list a la David Letterman.
So…. to continue the Tonight Show theme, “HEEEEERE’S CHAUTONA!”
The Top 10 Lessons Will Not See Taught Me about Love
Sam Cooke. He studied his lessons well. Well, he didn’t study the history, biology, or science book—or that French he took. But apparently he studied the lessons of love (and at least basic arithmetic), because he knows love.
Love isn’t something we often consider as something to “learn.” It’s something we “feel” or “show” but learn?
Well, apparently, I can learn quite a lot as I write, because I found ten lessons about love in my new release, Will Not See. The second in the Sight Unseen Series, Will Not See shows a second victim to “non-traumatic spontaneous memory loss” as I’m calling it. Because I’m the doctor in the book and I get to.
So, in David Letterman style, here we go
10. Sometimes being loving hurts—both you and the one you love.
When someone in your life needs to hear truth, it isn’t always easy to give it. They might reject what they need most. Not only that, they might reject you. But if they truly need to hear what you might not want to say, love demands you put their needs over their wishes or your comfort. Ouch!
9. As Christians, love is never an option. It’s a mandate.
John 13:35—we all know it. Hey, we’ve sung it for years. “…they’ll know we are Christians by our love.” But that’s the thing, isn’t it? When loving others becomes an option in our minds, we’ve lost the essence of who we are called to be.
8. Showing love costs.
In Will Not See, several people demonstrate love in action and all of them pay a price. Time, money, emotional investment—even physical safety. It really spoke to me and made me wonder how often I shy away from demonstrating love because I resist the cost.
7. Showing love pays.
I also learned that it’s worth it—the cost of love. That sacrifice of time, self, money, pride… whatever it was will never be wasted (well, unless the one you show love to immediately loses all memory, I suppose) Not only that, making a difference in someone else’s life makes a difference in yours. It changes you.
6. The broken cling to and shy away from love—all at once.
At first, I couldn’t understand why Vikki, the main character in Will Not See both clung to anyone who showed true kindness and support (love in action) and shied away from them. Why was she like that? Why had I written her that way. But when I reflected on other broken people I’ve known, I realized it’s how it often works. We instinctively know we need help, we crave it and the connection with the helper, but we run from it as well. Because we know we’re making ourselves vulnerable, and vulnerability is an invitation for more pain.
5. Love truly can be blind.
I always thought the whole “love is blind” thing was just a way of saying love makes it impossible to see flaws. But as I wrote Will Not See and saw different people in new lights, I realized that the “blindness” is often more like how a light shining from one direction makes it hard to see much of what’s behind that light. You can only see the light. Maybe that’s why Jesus is called the light. He stands there, shining and blinding us to everything that would take our eyes off Him. As long as we’re looking in His direction, anyway.
4. Love can make you blind to your faults, too.
When you’re so desperate to know someone cares, it becomes crazy easy to sanitize your perception of yourself in hopes that it will make those you care about blind to them, too.
3. Hate, selfishness… sin can drown out the melody of love with harsh, discordant, blaring lies.
My character, Vikki, lived a horrible childhood—horrible. There were good times woven in among the bad, but those good times were all but obliterated by the sinfulness of those who would take advantage of the vulnerability of a child without real protection.
2. Everyone needs to be and to feel loved.
When you consider how our Creator demonstrated His love to us—to die in our place, it shouldn’t surprise us that we both need to be and to feel love. After all, we were created in His image, and that’s some pretty powerful love right there.
And the #1 lesson I learned?
1. God’s love never fails.
Even when we fail Him, even when we lose everything about ourselves and don’t know anything else, we know our relationship to God. Sometimes that is a deep, abiding faith. Other times it’s an acknowledgment of His existence. It may be that we know we don’t believe He exists. But even if our memories fade or are ripped from us, the Holy Spirit still indwells His people. We know—even if we don’t.
There they are! The top 10 things Will Not See taught me about love. Thanks, Cathe, for “having me on your program.” 😉