It takes courage to love...

... and I don't mean romantic love.
It takes courage to love each other as brothers and sisters, as fellow human beings. It takes courage to see bad things and experience bad things and not plant seeds of resentment and hate within our hearts. It is even harder to stop those seeds from growing and festering once they are already planted.

I have wrestled with >hatred< my entire life. I hated myself, I hated my father, I hated my mother, I hated America, I hated Japan, I hated men, I hated war, I hated history, I hated racism, I hated people... I hated rules, I hated authority. I don't think "I don't like..." was in my vocabulary. I either loved or hated things. I thought this was normal, and even good. I knew where I stood, everyone did. I would make it clear whether I liked you or not, I would be frank (often brutally so) and considered my black-and-whiteness to be a great strength.

I have since been transformed. What does this have to do with being Mormon, you ask? It has everything to do with it. It has been such a gradual change since I converted that I can not tell you when or how it happened, I can only attest by my existence that it has taken place. My father and I are just about as close as [insert witty, uber-educated analogy of two things that hate each other].

Our fights would be so bad that I would be throwing things at him, cursing him out, and my mother would fear for his safety (seriously-- i can't believe it either.) But so it was.

I can't understand why, but something has developed inside me. An intuitive caring, perhaps... a desire for his wellbeing, and more recently, a simple foundation of love. It's kind of a miracle.

I credit these changes to everything I have learned in the Gospel. As I have learned about a God who loves me, a brother who died for me, my definition of love has been transformed. It is no longer the 2-way street I thought it was supposed to be. I consider all the years I denied both God and the Savior, and I am humbled by the fact that they never turned away. They never hurt me or wished me harm, they might have mourned my self destructive ways, but they only extended hands of forgiveness to me.

It is through their example, and how their love has changed me, that my love for others has been changed. My father continues to treat me less than ideally, and yet I have found great strength, comfort, and even happiness, in loving him despite it all... in fact, the more I exercise my ability to love him without expectation, the deeper my love for him grows. It is strange. All I can say is, it sounds crazy... but try it, it works.

Try loving someone, the person you hate the most... perhaps you are hating me right now for challenging you because you know exactly who I am talking about. Yes. That person. That person who hurt you the most, the person who bugs you the most, the person who took up countless pages in your diary, the person who disappointed you the most.

Try forgiving them, try loving them... and see how in the end, it isn't about them at all. It is about how love changes you. It changed me.