WHY THIS BOOK MATTERS

We live in a world desperately looking for love.

We look for it in relationships, in marriage, in family, in friendship, in success, in recognition, in money, in achievement and in the approval of other people. We want somebody to love us, choose us, understand us, accept us and make us feel that we are enough.

And yet, despite all our searching, so many people still feel lonely, disconnected, rejected, anxious and unworthy of love.

Perhaps the problem is not that there is too little love in the world.

Perhaps we have simply misunderstood what love is.

We have been taught to think of love primarily as something that happens between two people. We fall in love. We find someone we love. We hope they love us back. And when they don’t love us in the way we need, we experience disappointment, rejection, anger and pain.

But what if love is much bigger than that?

What if love is not merely something we receive from another person, but something we choose to become?

This book begins with a simple but profound progression:

Love God.
Love yourself.
Love your neighbour.

These three movements create a different way of living.

First, we turn upward and discover our relationship with God—the source of love, meaning, grace and belonging.

Then we turn inward and learn to love ourselves. Not the perfect version of ourselves. Not the successful version. Not the version that has everything figured out.

We learn to love the whole of ourselves.

Our strengths.
Our weaknesses.
Our mistakes.
Our fears.
Our wounds.
Our history.
Our humanity.

We discover that we are not broken people who need to be fixed. We are human beings who have parts of ourselves that need to be loved more.

And then something extraordinary happens.

When we learn to receive love and give love to ourselves, we become capable of turning outward.

We begin to love our neighbour.

Not because they have earned it.

Not because they agree with us.

Not because they can give us something in return.

But because love has become the way we choose to meet the world.

THE PROBLEM WE HAVE IDENTIFIED

The problem is that many of us are trying to build a life without first learning how to live from love.

We seek relationships to fill emptiness.

We seek approval to establish our worth.

We seek achievement to prove that we matter.

We try to change ourselves because we believe something is wrong with us.

We reject difficult emotions.

We reject painful experiences.

We reject people who disappoint us.

We reject parts of ourselves that we don’t like.

And slowly, without realizing it, we begin living a life of resistance rather than a life of love.

We fight against what is.

We wish people were different.

We wish our past had been different.

We wish our bodies were different.

We wish our circumstances were different.

We wish we felt differently.

And perhaps this is one of the great sources of human suffering:

We spend so much of our lives rejecting the life we have been given.

This book proposes another possibility.

What if we stopped fighting life and started embracing it?

What if our journey through this extraordinary human experience became a love story?

Not because everything that happens is pleasant.

Not because we won’t experience loss, grief, betrayal, disappointment or pain.

But because we choose to meet everything with love.

The people.

The experiences.

The feelings.

The thoughts.

The successes.

The failures.

The beginnings.

The endings.

The beautiful moments.

And even the difficult ones.

THE SOLUTION WE OFFER

The solution is not another formula for finding the perfect relationship.

It is not another guide to becoming more attractive, more successful or more lovable.

It is an invitation to fundamentally change the way we understand love.

Love becomes a practice.

A choice.

A way of seeing.

A way of touching.

A way of speaking.

A way of listening.

A way of serving.

A way of being.

And at the heart of that way of being is the serving spirit.

Because perhaps the deepest expression of love is not, “What can you do for me?”

It is:

“How can I serve you?”

When love becomes service, relationships change.

When love becomes acceptance, our relationship with ourselves changes.

When love becomes compassion, our relationship with others changes.

When love becomes our response to life itself, our entire experience of being alive changes.

This book therefore offers a journey through three movements:

Love God — discover where love comes from.

Love yourself — allow that love to transform the relationship you have with yourself.

Love your neighbour — allow that love to flow through you into the lives of others.

And ultimately, these three become one.

We discover that the love we receive from God can become the love we give ourselves, which can become the love we give to the world.

WHY WOULD SOMEONE READ THIS BOOK?

You might read this book because you are looking for love.

You might read it because you have lost love.

You might read it because you have been hurt by love.

You might read it because you are struggling to love yourself.

You might read it because your relationship has become difficult.

You might read it because you want to understand why relationships sometimes hurt so much.

Or perhaps you simply have a feeling that there must be more to life than the life you are currently living.

This book is for the person who is tired of fighting themselves.

For the person who feels they are not enough.

For the person carrying shame about their past.

For the person who keeps looking outside themselves for something that can only ultimately be discovered within.

For the person who wants a deeper relationship with God.

For the person who wants to love themselves without becoming selfish.

For the person who wants to love another human being without losing themselves.

And for the person who is ready to stop merely getting through life and start experiencing life as the astonishing love story that it can be.

THE INVITATION

This book does not promise you a life without pain.

It offers something more meaningful.

It invites you to discover that pain does not have to prevent you from loving.

You can experience loss and still love.

You can be disappointed and still love.

You can be afraid and still love.

You can be imperfect and still love.

You can disagree and still love.

You can let go and still love.

You can say goodbye and still love.

And you can begin again.

Because love is not dependent upon life becoming perfect.

Love is how we choose to meet life.

That is why this book matters.

Because perhaps the greatest transformation available to a human being is not learning how to get more from life.

Perhaps it is learning how to love more of life.

More of ourselves.

More of one another.

More of our experiences.

More of the journey.

More of the mystery.

More of God.

And when we begin to live that way, something beautiful happens.

We stop asking:

“How can I make my life better?”

And we begin asking:

“How can I love this life more completely?”

That is the journey of this book.

Not simply learning about love.

But learning to live as love.