16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
19 We love, because He first loved us.
20 If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
21 And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.
1 John 4:15-21
Love can be bungled in the heart of a human. There is great advice in scripture for anyone who has a frustrated love for another. I have had successful experience in partnership, happy and healthy. I am very grateful for this. Unfortunately, it ended due to the passing of my mate. Now, I am often discouraged. I yearn for healthy partnership to manifest again. I look for mutual reception in relationship. To share in natural outpouring, to give and receive in balance, to lift up and support one another, to build trust through open communication, to hold one another and lean on the Lord together, to solve problems with His help; these are the things that are important to me. I seek balance in love. There is a possibility that this way of being, happy love between a man and a woman, is not available to me now. I have had my fair share in this lifetime. I must come to terms with this. Though I pray for healthy partnership, it may be that this is not the Lord's will. Though I feel that I do best as a teammate, this may not be what the Lord has in mind for me now.
John's letters help me to lose the urgent need, disappointment, even the hint of despair I sometimes feel when a mutually receptive relationship seems far from being possible again. Epiphany! I can pour out my love for fellow brothers and sisters in Christ! It is much the same release and helps in very satisfying ways to transmute the strong need for a healthy relationship into an understanding that I already have one. Not with one, but many others! What I think I need may not match what the Lord knows I need. I am not alone. There is no reason to despair. Hallelujah! Please Lord bless me with understanding and continue to lead me in a healthy direction, one that helps my brothers and sisters in Christ above all other things in this life!