Let your Love flow like a Mountain Stream

“Let your love flow like a mountain stream.” By the Bellamy Brothers. This was the song that came to me at 2:30 am contemplating a love flow problem. Some people search for someone to love them. Some are more concerned with vanity, power or money. Others however, are searching for a recipient of love.

Women mainly, empty nesters or women who didn’t have kids or their kids are estranged often to no fault of their own search for others to receive their love. They may have a husband but for many loving women that isn’t enough. They feel they need to teach or nurture others. They long for a kind of camaraderie or companionship that may have become extinct in the age of social media. Quilting groups, book clubs and service organizations abound across the land to fill this need. Yet often this doesn’t satisfy the missing piece of their love puzzle. Many feel frustrated, angry and bitter. Their lives seem wonderful and they are. They have beautiful homes, plenty of money, family and friends that love them. Life in a free country. So why are so many American women running around as bitter as my left shoe?

I believe that it is a love flow problem. When something happens in our life that causes us pain we have a hurt response. The first casualty to our hurt response is to cut off the flow of love. So, when we are disappointed, didn’t get our way, disrespected, experience a tragic loss or any number of other events that cause pain big or small we are hurt. Now we have a what Eckhart Tolle calls the pain body in his book “The Power of Now”. As more hurtful events happen this pain body grows. Most American women have little or no way to process these hurts. Some seek therapy. Others treat themselves with drugs, alcohol, over eating, sex, excessive work and so on. In reality there is only one way to be truly healed from hurt. Jesus is the only way. But how? Many of these hurt people are Christians. Why are they not healed?

Some simply disregard their own pain as too small to mention. The size of the pain is irrelevant. The pain and hurt still need attention. Even the smallest cut can get an infection and eventually kill. Same with a cut in our emotions, spirit or soul. Many women belittle their own pain because they believe (or more likely they have been told) that their pain did not compare to someone else’s. This is cruel and untrue. We all have different levels of tolerances and sensitivities. One situation may hurt a sensitive person while another would consider it of no consequence. Every woman has been told to “just get over it”. Usually by men, sorry men but it is true. This flippant attitude causes us to ignore our pain, push it under the carpet like it doesn’t exist. We think this is “getting over it” but in reality, it is still there under the carpet festering. This is when bitterness, resentment and anger set in. Then when the next thing comes along, two pains are under the carpet. Imagine how many things are under there by the time we are in our sixties and seventies.

Years ago, I used to work trade shows. I would ask people to fill out a survey to see if they were interested in my services. It was a rather tedious job with much rejection involved so I made it fun. As the folks wondered down my aisle, I studied their faces. I gave the same spiel to each person with equal enthusiasm. I noticed after only a few hours of this that those that had a bitter expression on their face would indeed be negative to me. The older the person was the more they had that bitter face implanted in their wrinkles. Even the common plastic surgery that abounds in Southern California could not erase the bitter face from those with the negative attitude. I came to the conclusion that my mother was right. “If you make that face it will stick that way.” I set out to have a happy, non-bitter face so I would have smile wrinkles when I am old and not bitter ones.

Avoiding bitterness, however, has not been as easy as I thought it would be when I was in my twenties. Still determined to avoid the dreaded bitter face I have studied and implemented many goals in my life most of which I accomplished. The last piece to the anti-bitter puzzle came to me recently. It is a love flow problem.

Two years ago, I was on the back deck of my homestead cottage back at the South Forty doing a rewrite on my novel that came out November 2022, Between Thorns and Glory. In trying to solve one of my character’s problems a thought came to me. My character Allison had stopped the flow of love through shame, anger, hurt and bitterness to the point that she was a walking catatonic. She lived in a beautiful enchanted cottage that she could not see or enjoy. She needed to find a way to feel love instead of all that shame and hurt. She needed to let her love flow. During the editing process this idea got cut from the book. So, I forgot about the concept and when on with my life never realizing that the love flow concept was for me not my character.

One night I woke up with pain, heart pain, not the kind that can be fixed by a cardiologist. I got up and went to my study to pray. I love to pray. God always shows me so much kindness and mercy. After a while I felt better and suddenly a song came to my mind. “Let your love flow like a mountain stream.”

The old concept from two years ago came flooding back to me. I had a love flow problem. Here is how it works. Love flows into us from God(Jesus). Then when we are hurt, angry, bitter, or have a bad attitude we stop the flow. The love cannot flow onto us from God, through us or out of us. The results are words, actions and yes, facial expressions that show hurt, anger, hopelessness, depression or bitterness. Love cannot flow through these things. That is why Paul urged us to think about good things.

“And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thought on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”

Philippians 4:8

Love can flow through those things. Love flowing from God or an outside source through your body and out again is essential to living. Did you know that babies that are fed and changed but never held, nuzzled or hugged can stop growing and can even die. This was discovered when researchers were trying to figure out why orphanages had a 30%-40% infant mortality rate. As babies we need love from a caring adult. As we grow into adults we learn faith and rely on God for this inflow of love. He is the original source of love and the most accessible source to this day and always. Harboring bitterness prevents us from feeling God’s love flow through us.

I used to feel hopeless because I believed that this love God lavished on me had to flow out to others besides my husband such as my family or friends. But over the years I have not found sufficient others to receive this love. Then that prayerful night it became so clear. The love doesn’t have to be directed at anyone for it to flow through. Simply allowing the love to come and to flow through me nourishes me, repairs my soul. If someone is there to receive the excessive love that flows out of me great. But it is not necessary. This love can and does fall back on ourselves and the rest flows back to God. It is a grand circle of love between God and us, meant for us.

This is a simple concept. Why can we not “Let the love flow like a mountain stream”. Where do we get off track?
The original teacher and example of love is Jesus. Everything he taught was from love. His disciples taught from pure love because they had been loved by the very creator of love in person. We can only imagine how wonderful that must have been. Over the last two thousand plus years of teaching Christianity this love has been lost. During the Middle Ages the Gospel became about power, control and condemnation. These things are the opposite of love. Martin Luther and others tried to fix this problem during the Renaissance and Reformation by giving access to the written word of God. We all have the Bible now so we are good right? No. Why? We are not being taught the truth and love of Jesus by those who love us. We hire pastors from other cities, states or even countries. They may not know us or love us. Some of them still use the Gospel for other purposes such as money, power, fame, prestige. A few, I believe, do devote themselves to loving their congregations the best they can. But even these few are bound to the board who hired them. This is an unfortunate fact of life. We don’t blame these pastors but what is the solution? For all to love each other and put aside personal ambitions so the love of Jesus and can flow through them, to themselves and back to God and then the excessive love will land on all those around them. Then we will have the world that Jesus wants for us.

For this to work we must acknowledge that loving ourselves is a good thing and allow it and allow others to experience it. Please remember, I am not talking about egotism, selfishness or arrogance but rather love, pure healthy love.

Plenty of psychologists these days are teaching that we should love ourselves. But, say “to love yourself” in practically any church across the land and you will immediately have a church lady chastising and telling you that “we love Jesus”. Immediately disregarding the love of self as sinful. The teaching that Christians should not love ourselves abound on the internet. This is an illogical teaching that does not come from Jesus. Because of this teaching, especially Christian women, have believed that loving ourselves is selfish, egotistical and ungodly.

In reality God expects us to love ourselves.

Jesus replied, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important; “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

Mathew 22:37 – 40

Here Jesus assumes that we love ourselves. So, the logical conclusion is that, if we allow it, God’s love flows through us and our body. We soak up Gods love and allow the love to penetrate into ourselves curing the pain body. Then love flows back out of our bodies and souls to whoever can be a recipient, or God. It is amazing to me that Jesus put the commandment to love God equal to loving ourselves and others. (Please remember loving ourselves is not the same as vanity, ego or self-centeredness.) What cruel evil person thought to teach women that it was not right to love ourselves. I have a whole other blog on this subject so I won’t go into the details here.

So, how to do this. I would recommend not dredging things up from the past. Do this process as things come up. When a pain or hurt resurfaces or a new one happens go through the process as soon as you can. Take each hurt one at a time. Allow yourself to feel it for 10 seconds then allow Gods love to flow into you. Then, allow God’s love to flow into you and heal that pain once and for all. Lay down the hurt at the foot of the cross. Surprisingly, this feels like a sacrifice. You would think we would want to get rid of our pain but we are reluctant to do so. We like to hoard our hurt. Anger, resentment and bitterness can feel like power but it is a trick. Give it to God and he will replace it with love, peace, joy and freedom. Make a choice. Do you want to feel pain or peace? Hurt or joy? Resentment or freedom? Put your arms around yourself and allow Gods love and your own to envelope you. Accept your peace, joy and freedom and thank God for it. Actually, thank him for it. Get on your knees and thank him and worship him.

His love will flow into you if you ask for it and allow it. Let the love flow like a mountain stream. This is the life God has for you: a life of freedom, peace and joy. Next time you feel bitter do this and listen to that song and I promise your bitterness will melt into love in an almost magical way.