Finding True Love in a Prickly Pear World: The Search for a Love Worth Finding

By IBG

What the heck is a prickly pear? Webster defines it as a spiny pear-shaped edible fruit that grows on the Opuntia cacti found in dry arid climates. So, what correlation does a prickly pear have with us? Well, it’s been said that the world is our oyster, and we are the pearls it produces. However, in this book we will discover that the world is our cactus and we are the prickly pear people it produces. As prickly pear people, we’ve learned to love conditionally, where love must be earned and deserved to gain it, and performance is required to maintain and keep it. That is NOT true of God’s love! Therefore, this book provides a powerful resource to learn to love beyond what we’ve been taught. Within its pages, the attributes of true unconditional love are defined in vivid detail to explore what it is and how it acts. There is also the opportunity to reexamine the common beliefs about love and discover the stark contrast between God’s love and the way the world loves that has been promoted through the media, music, opinions/influences of our peers, and those in our Christian circles. This is a contemplative, life-changing journey that is sure to inspire us to think, speak, and act differently than the world around us in the way we love one another.

If you’re ready to find true love in this prickly pear world, your search for a love worth finding begins here!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781098081478

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Finding True Love in a Prickly Pear World

The Search for a Love Worth Finding

IBG

Copyright © 2022 by IBG

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

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Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

A New Point of View on Love

What Is Love?

Love Is Not!

Love Does Not! (Part One)

Love Does Not! (Part Two)

What Love Does

Love never Fails!

Acknowledgment

Iwould like to acknowledge the following people for their loving support that gave me the courage to embark on the journey that led to the writing of this book. First and foremost, I want to thank my dad, who loved to see God at work in and through my life. He was my greatest supporter when it came to God’s calling upon my life, and he was the one who encouraged me to write this book. Dad, I wish you were here to read it!

Another person that was instrumental in my life was my father-in-law. His love and compassion for his son during that difficult season in our marriage kept me from giving up. Family meant everything to him, and his counsel during that time inspired me to fight for the future of my husband, my marriage, my children, and my future grandchildren. I wish you were here to see the fruit of your counsel!

God also sent two Christian counselors my way: Ann MacDavid, MFT, and Rubin Gomez, marriage and family counselor. As cherished friends, they were there for me at a moment’s notice, to affirm what God was doing amid tremendous heartache and pain. Their godly counsel also kept me grounded in God’s purpose and plan for everything that was happening, and without them, my marriage would be another sad statistic for divorce.

I would also like to acknowledge my big sister, who I stayed with for two months when things with my husband took a turn for the worse. I am deeply grateful for her emotional and spiritual support during that time. She never took sides though she had a front-row seat to the heartache and pain I was going through. Therefore, God used her as a safe harbor to run to in the middle of my raging storm. She is more than a sister! She is my best friend and spiritual mentor.

Last but far from least, I would like to thank my husband for his courage to turn around in spite of everything and give me a second chance. God has used him in tremendous ways to teach me the most important lessons in this life. I thank God every day for him, and I love him with all my heart!

Introduction

First, what the heck is a prickly pear? By definition, it is a pulpy pear-shaped edible fruit that is studded with tubercle spines or prickly hairs that grow on the Opuntia cacti. I live in an area of Southern California known as the High Desert, and cacti that produce this fruit are plentiful here. However, the prickly hairs or spines on this fruit make it incredibly difficult to pick, and once you get past the spines, there is very little sweet fruit to enjoy. So why bother? We could ask God that same question regarding His pursuit of us, human prickly pears. His hands bear the scars from our spiny sinfulness, and once He has picked us, our reluctance to doing things His way often cause our lives to yield very little fruit. I’ve heard it said that the world is our oyster, and we are the pearls it produces. In my opinion, the world is our cactus, and we are the prickly pear people it produces. Let’s face it: no one is perfect. We all have flaws that are just plain unlovable, and the unconditional love of God is truly the only love that can love those prickly unlovable parts of ourselves. His love is also the only true source from which we can love the other prickly pear people around us. Do I hear an Amen anyone? Or maybe you’re shaking your head, saying, Flaws, what flaws? or People love one another all the time without God’s help. Really?! Well, our flawed humanity is too big a topic to cover in this introduction, but we will take a moment to explore how people love one another.

We all come into this world learning to love based on our needs. A child’s need for food, touch, changing, etc. teaches him/her to love one or more complete strangers who provide all that. Over time, these strangers become the familiar faces we associate with the title of mom and/or dad. As children, we quickly learn that doing what’s deemed as good is rewarded with praise, hugs/kisses, or maybe something sweet to eat from our parents or caregivers. Doing what’s considered bad gets us in the corner, scolded by harsh words, or a painful sting on the behind, and in trouble with our parents or caregivers. At this stage of development, as we strive for praise and acceptance from others, love quickly becomes about performance. As adolescents, we go to school, and our teachers and peers reinforce that definition of love. Report cards are used to measure our academic performance. Our popularity with others, like friends and the opposite sex, determine our social performance. Are you still with me? As teenagers and young adults, the bar raises even higher with our pursuit of education and/or a career. It’s also around this time that our relational performance is put to the ultimate test to find that right person for us, and in turn, to be that right person for someone. If we’re lucky enough to make this happen, then voila! Love happens, and it’s happily-ever-after for the two of us. Then come children, and the cycle begins again. And there you have it, love’s circle of life.

Wait a minute, what about all those married couples you know? Are they living the happily ever after bliss? How many of them are still together, or how many of them are on their second marriage? I’m not siding with the hopeless statistical data that 50 percent of marriages end in divorce to prove my point. I’ve read this is not accurate and that the divorce rate is much lower than that. Yeah! That is indeed good news! However, divorce is still happening. As a child, I was not afforded the luxury of a childhood spared from the ravages of divorce or from experiencing divorce, in my first marriage. You don’t have to be an MFT (marriage family therapist) or work for a government agency that evaluates American families to understand how dysfunctional the state of the family currently is. In my opinion, the decay of the family is directly responsible for the moral decline of our nation as a whole. According to data found on www.teenhelp.com, www.childwelfare.gov, and many other internet statistical sites, physical/sexual abuse, suicide, drug/alcohol use, and divorce are all on the increase. Why is that? I believe, speaking from a prickly-pear-person point of view, this is what happens when prickly pear people attempt to love other prickly pear people apart from the unconditional love of God. I’ve been there! I’ve done that! And I would still be doing that if God had not intervened in my life and profoundly changed my understanding of His love. This, in turn, has radically changed the way I love myself and those around me. That is why I decided to write this book.

The unconditional love of God is highly misunderstood and rarely realized, even among Christians. Most of us are raised with the understanding of love that I referred to above. However, this love is conditional, contingent on being earned and deserved to gain it, and on performance to maintain and keep it. God’s love is not! Hopefully, as I share what He has taught me about His amazing love, it will challenge you to love differently than what you’ve been taught. However, it will, first and foremost, require you to reexamine everything you believe about love and face the lies about love that have been promoted through music, media, the opinions/influences of your peers, and even those in your Christian circles.

Then, as you choose to think, speak, and act on what you’ve learned, this new definition of love will not only transform your relationship with God, it will transform you, and your relationship with others. When this happens, you will at last find true love in this prickly pear world and the search for a love worth finding will end. So without further ado, let’s begin.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God;

and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God

has sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us

and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another,

God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.

We love, because He first loved us.

—1 John 4:7–12, 19, (NASB)

A New Point of View on Love

The True Source of Conditional Love

We are the true source of love, conditional love, that is. Everything that we’ve experienced from the moment of birth to our present lot in life is the source we draw from to love ourselves and others. Everything we’ve been taught about love shapes our beliefs about love. As a result, our beliefs about love determine our ability to love and receive love from others. Since to love and be loved is said to be the greatest human need, there has been a great deal written about how to obtain it and hold on to it. You’d think with all these available resources we’d be masters at the art of love. However, divorce is still way too popular, and, all too often, couples who live together in this country don’t end up married or even staying together. Searching for our soul mate now has us flocking to the internet dating sites like eHarmony and Match.com to fill out a profile that determines our compatibility with others so we can find the right person. Why? Probably because our lives are either too busy, too complicated, the pickins are too slim, or our picker is broke altogether, so we need someone else to do the picking for us. Or maybe it’s because we’re too tired of all the drama that goes along with bad relationships to risk doing it the old fashion way via trial and error. Yet even with a profile to look at, the facades we wear just to be accepted by others can cause us to live a lie that makes dating, love, and marriage still a risky proposition. The Forrest Gump philosophy that life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get, pretty much sums up our pursuit of love as well.

A Limited Source Makes for a Fallible Love

Since we are the true source of conditional love, our ability to love is as limited as we are. Because our ability to love is limited, our love for those around us can and does fail. Let’s look at a few of our human limitations and discover why being a limited source makes for a fallible love.

Our personality/character traits, whether good, bad, or indifferent, can limit our ability to love and be loved. For example, some of us are overly kind, naïve, and generous. Due to this, loving others can result in being taken advantage of or being victimized in our relationships. Some of us are introverted, shy, or reserved, and loving others can feel unsafe, making intimacy in our relationships hard to achieve. These are only a few of the many personality/character traits that can affect our relationships and serve as an excuse for our love for one another to fade over time or fail.

Our career/job, or lack thereof, can limit our ability to love and be loved. Our career/job can over-commit our time and energy and create issues with misappropriated passion. This happens when our drive for success becomes more important than our relationships, which can breed strong feelings of neglect in those we love. The lack of a job/career or the motivation to get one can also put financial, emotional, and mental strain on our relationships. Therefore, our career/job status can be a catalyst that causes our love for each other to fade or fail.

Our physical, emotional, mental, and sexual limitations can affect our ability to love and be loved. Physical appearance, emotional/mental stability, and our sexual appetite can be huge factors in determining our desirability in relationships. Because these things are subject to change over time, so does our desirability. Once again, this can cause our love for one another to fade or fail.

There are also social, economic, political, and spiritual orientations that can limit our ability to love and be loved. During the dating process, these cultural factors tend to determine our compatibility with others. If we ignore them for the sake of love, we often find our love is not enough to overcome the differences or divisiveness they create, and our love for each other can fade or fail yet again. Sadly, the human race can be hard to please. It’s clear to see that dealing with our human diversity and uniqueness can cultivate performance-based love that is both fickle and fleeting that can fade over time or end altogether.

Can we unconditionally love someone? They (the experts) say parental love is the closest we come to unconditionally loving another person. As the mother of three daughters, I strongly agree with that consensus. Ask the parents of a newborn holding their child for the first time about the love they feel. It is unique and intensely selfless. Yet those feelings tend to change after six months or so when they have lost sleep, changed poopy diapers, been puked on, and haven’t had sex with their spouse due to exhaustion. Their feelings for their new arrival become far more realistic and less euphoric. Yes, they still love their little bundle of joy, but the work of raising a child can make the love they feel less surreal. They also quickly realize their love fails to create a perfect world for them and their children.

As their children grow into teenagers, more problems can arise that challenge their love for one another, yet again. At this stage, love and respect for parents can become an obligation on the child that breeds resentment toward parental authority. The parents, in turn, may resent the child’s pursuit of individuality and freedom that threatens their authority. Or it may promote a silent resolve of complacency in both parent and child that ends when the child graduates from high school or sometimes even before that. Once children leave home, these young adults discover life apart from the influences (teaching, rules, and opinions) of their parents. This can sometimes put a strain on the parent/child relationship and, even that love can fail. Just ask the parents of a child who hasn’t talked to them in years because of a heated argument. Or a son or daughter who has been abandoned by their parents because of a lifestyle choice their parents didn’t agree with. Unfortunately, when this happens it causes the illusion of unconditional love to fade into a conditional love that can fail.

A Love of Contingencies—The Hollywood Formula for Love

What about romantic love? Doesn’t I will love you forever mean forever? Nope! Even our motivation to be in a romantic relationship with someone tends to set us up for failure. How is that? Well, most of us enter into a dating relationship with the agenda to love and be loved by someone. This is supposedly our e-ticket to happiness. This need for love makes it necessary for us to entertain the belief that we have enough love to give, and we’re lovable enough that loving us in return won’t be a problem. The lyric from the song When I Fall in Love best describes this Hollywood formula for love.

"When I know that you feel that way too,

that’s when I’ll fall in love with you."

We don’t or won’t risk loving someone until we know the other person is able and willing to reciprocate that love. Then our ability or willingness to love is tested in a revolving door of contingencies we must repeatedly walk through to prove our love. Again, this give to get agenda makes love about performance, and like those in Hollywood, we wear whatever mask or play whatever role we need to, to get what we want. Therefore, this love of contingencies is manipulative and self-seeking. When the masks come off and the role-playing stops, it leaves us disappointed, discouraged, and brokenhearted. Yet Hollywood has done much to glamorize this formula for falling in love. We are led to believe that all we have to do is find the right person. Once we do, this right person will, in turn, meet our needs, desires, and expectations, and we will, in turn, meet theirs. When that happens, whether it leads to marriage or not, we will live happily ever after. However, what this Hollywood formula for love fails to mention or show us is all the pain and heartache that comes from doing this over and over again without success or the happily-ever-after ending that it promises. Chip Ingram, in his book and DVD series entitled Love, Sex, and Relationship, deals with this Hollywood formula. He exposes the lie of it, why it fails, and how it differs from God’s formula for relationships. He does an excellent job exploring what works in relationships, what doesn’t, and why. I highly recommend it.

So this Hollywood formula of love with contingencies" grows if the conditions are favorable and dies if the conditions are not so favorable. You might think this is a cynical outlook on love. Yet if your current significant other or spouse stopped loving you, or worse yet, cheated on you, would your love for them change? Would you stop loving them altogether? Would you leave them? If married, would you consider divorcing them? Infidelity, whether it be emotional (neglect and misappropriated passion), physical (adultery), or visual (addiction to pornography), is on the rise, and it is taking its toll on both long-term and short-term relationships. Sexual infidelity is also seen as the kiss of death or a deal-breaker in relationships. Due to this, conditional love rarely survives such an assault. Conditional love is too dependent on the other person being trustworthy (favorable conditions). So when trust is fractured because of sexual infidelity (unfavorable conditions), love is revoked to protect the heart of the one betrayed. Sexual infidelity, even in Christian circles, is seen as immediate grounds for divorce based on a shallow interpretation of Matthew 5:31–32. Is it the kiss of death or a deal-breaker for you?

There are many other contingencies that plague relationships and threaten conditional love’s survival as well. Contingencies such as addiction to substances, pornography, work, and gambling can be even more difficult to overcome than sexual infidelity. Abusive behavior that is physical, verbal, mental, or emotional can make relationships unsafe, if not dangerous, and those who stay in those relationships live in a constant state of fear. There are also mental/emotional issues such as obsessive-compulsive behavior, bipolar, depression, and anxiety disorders that create unfavorable conditions within the relationship. Even though we tend to be more empathetic toward those who struggle with mental/emotional issues, they do create instability and chaos that dismantle the fabric of relationships and can destroy conditional love.

Today, people fall out of love a lot, and sadly, for reasons less serious than those mentioned above. For example, financial problems, lack of compatibility, unable to talk to one another anymore, sexual issues, or having no common interests can put us at odds with one another. And for many, they are seen as legitimate reasons for ending the relationship or marriage. However, this only proves that commitment doesn’t mean what it used to and till death do us part no longer holds true when we love with contingencies.

The Epidemic of A Love of Lesser Things

Another issue that makes falling in and out of love easy is our willingness to settle for a love of lesser things. This has created a relational epidemic that has left a mountain of woundedness in its wake. The sexual revolution of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s did much to free us of the stigmas attached to