Is there a condition to Love?

It didn’t occur to me that asides family, love would be confessed to me, so I never prepared.

Boys were very much vocal about love and I found myself swooning, and my heart racing ten times harder. It was a series of hopscotch inside of my chest and fireflies danced about the momentary flame that ignited in my belly and the clouds in my head were filled with happy butterflies. I was a child and somewhat a fool but as age counted, I became more self-conscious and society taught me some of its vices and slogans. ‘Nothing goes for nothing’ was top of it and love waned in my ears and heart.

I sought to pay for all that I received. Knowledge for good grades, hard work and good earnings for good looks, money pills to boost my ego, clothes and accessories- flashy possessions for healthy esteem, church attendance for moral uprightness, friends for social status. What for love? Labour? Sex?

So when I heard God call out to me, I took cover because I had nothing to offer him for his love but He’s super relentless. There is no mountain he didn’t climb up, no shadow he didn’t light up coming after me. I told the ugly truth about my life hoping he’d take the next flight at the gory sight of my past. Oh, I hoped he’d turn away from this hardened sinner like the preachers said he would. I wished he’d let me go so my sordid soul wouldn’t be tortured by the proximity of his perfect purity. How I wanted him to abandon me in the filth I know how to wallow in because I wasn’t deserving even of his attention.

Yet, every time I pushed him away, He never left, He only went quiet leaving my mind with confessions of love to chew on. Every time I ran out of the humble abode He got me, He kept coming for me. There was no condition to His love.

The worst thing of all was He wouldn’t accept anything in return. ‘Know it, accept it, receive it’ He’d bid me each time. But ‘nothing goes for nothing’. If I didn’t pay, I’d be indebted all my life, so I ran from being a slave to His love. I denied it, ran from it, fought Him, convinced myself otherwise but His truth unravelled before my eyes every hour of every day.

I learn every day that life’s principles may apply to every other thing but it doesn’t exactly apply to love “nothing goes for nothing!” However it is not so with love because love isn’t self-seeking, it gives hard without requiring of your payment.

The only condition to love is to love. Love and love and love. Eventually, what goes around comes around!

Thank you for reading!

Has love ever come to you with a condition?
What is one thing that has affected your view on love?
Drop your thoughts in the comments!

Author: Victoria Nwachukwu