My lifelong struggle with love, exacerbated by autism, and how my attempts to show love have often been flawed. I realize authentic love comes from God and that I must rely on the Holy Spirit rather than my own wisdom to truly love others.
How can it be possible that a man of my age is talking about his “introduction” to love? Should it take almost seven decades for him to know enough about it?
Of course it shouldn’t!
That’s why I’ve been afraid. I’ve been afraid to start this series. I’ve procrastinated for almost a week. But I’ve been wrong all my life and I must move on.
This series also scares me because I have shown such imperfect love and caused great damage. I have even done so very recently.
It’s not that I didn’t want to show love. Yes, I tried to show love. But I did it in a very awkward way with respect to a relationship environment that was unfamiliar to me. As several professionals have pointed out in the past, I usually try to stay strictly within familiar social settings. I’ve always tried to stay in environments where I know the people I’m with and they know and tolerate me. I do this because I know the limitations of my autism.
I’ve done this since my youth, long before anyone called it autism, because I knew my social instincts were unusual and could get me in trouble unless I limited my social interactions.
I’ve been learning about those limitations since kindergarten! They are nothing new to me.
I should have done the same in my recent situation. I should have gone much slower and more cautiously.
Without going into detail, what made my love flawed was this: I followed my own wisdom regarding the right and the good. I’m used to pretending to the best of my ability, skills that I’m expected to have, but don’t have. Social skills are certainly included. But, in reality, this approach is never safe when applied to love. It’s particularly unsafe for me when I’m sad and in an unfamiliar situation.
More importantly, that’s not how love works. All love comes from God. It does not depend on my own wisdom. I must not pretend. Even if love is real, I shouldn’t improvise the actions that go along with it. They must come from God.
Specifically, God has poured out His love on my heart through the Holy Spirit He has given me. And God is love. It is not written solely or simply that God contains love, defines love, or always acts with love. God is love. All true love comes from him, and it must be poured into my heart by his Spirit.
For this reason, I must use only what the Spirit has poured out in my heart. Anything I do beyond this, anything I try, is not true love.
For the same reason, to show true love, I have to listen to the Spirit constantly and do what He says. Everything that comes only from me is not love, but a counterfeit, even if I believe it is true love.
Next: There is only one kind of love!
