By Author Denise Turney

Always choose love because, in reality, what else is there? Love is the gateway to peace. It is powerful, all-encompassing and eternal. Destinies, miracles and life itself owe all they are to love. So why the pull toward fear, worry, violence and trauma?

Are we that out of touch with our core? Has love, to us, become the greatest mystery?

Oh, the wonder of love and yet it’s never what you expect. You definitely don’t expect love to be elusive, and yet that is often how love seems. In fact, the harder you pursue love, the further away it seems to move.

What if Love is a Choice

And it’s this elusiveness that brings up a not-to-be-ignored point. Love is a choice, not an emotion or object that you can hold or take ownership of. Therefore, to find love, always choose love. Sound simple?

On a clear day, times absent struggle, disappointment or pain, it is simple. Let someone lie on you, betray you, bully you or abandon you and the simplicity of choosing love flees. During these complicated emotionally charged experiences, there’s so much to gain . . . and lose.

It all comes down to the choices you make. Choices because it might take a series of choices to get from hurt, anger or fear to love. But how do you know you don’t always choose love? How do you know you’re asking for an unloving experience?

About the Love Guarantee

Although you don’t have to be convinced that love is worth always choosing, you may be eager for confirmation that your pursuit of love will not fail. Childhood abandonment, relationship conflicts, not to mention communication struggles at work, can shy you away from love. Should this happen, you may demand a guarantee that love will work.

After all, who wants to look or feel foolish? But it’s impossible to get a guarantee that the best thing is to always choose love. If you still need a guarantee, you could peek in on other people’s relationships, witnessing how it plays out when they choose love or fear.

Signs You Don’t Always Choose Love

However, that probably wouldn’t convince you that it’s best to always choose love. On the contrary, that’s their relationships, not yours. Or you could suffer through life, afraid of what might happen if you choose love. And suffer you might eventually do, in a habit kind-of-way. Best to catch yourself, spot what you’re doing, early. Do any of these signs that you’re not choosing love resonate?

• Making excuses not to connect with other people
• Replaying former relationship conflicts until the memory thread starts wearing thin
• Working harder to protect yourself from sad romantic endings than you do at opening up to healthy relationships
• Boxing love in small or narrow perceptional passageways
• Feeling anger or fear when you let someone get emotionally close to you

That or you could spend years, which is a long time, trying to define love, not actually experience love but define it. Truth is, because love encompasses all that is real, it may be impossible to define love.

3 Reasons To Always Choose Love

Fact is love doesn’t always come with flowers, compliments, warm emotions, excitement or romance. Yet, rewards you gain when you always choose love are immeasurable, as these three reasons show:

• Joy, peace and love cannot be separated. Choose love and you gain joy. Even more, you gain peace. Additional benefits include trust, strong faith that love works, sharper inner vision, a clear conscience and confidence.
• Ease at forgiving is another reason to always choose love. After you experience the results of love, you may never want to be blocked again. Lack of forgiveness blocks the experience of love.
• Third, choosing love allows you to let life unfold unhindered, naturally. Additionally, you may feel more energized, balanced and supported. Also, you might expect good things to happen to you simply because you believe that, as someone who always chooses love, you deserve good.

The good news is that love encompasses all. Plainly, inside love is love for the Creator, love for Self and love for all of creation. Practice love and you sleep good at night. You gain experiences (also known as “proof”) that love works, even in this world – love works.

Choosing Love Changes Everything

By always choosing love, you can see how time or space cannot stop love. This doesn’t mean that everyone believes in love, let alone chooses love. Past experiences cause many people to fear love, to believe that love caused the pain in their relationships.

In fact, some people make themselves hard to love. It can take years to see that this is a call for help. In fact, Raymond Clarke starts learning to cry out for love early. He learns this lesson through his father, the one parent who stayed back to care for him when he was only two years old.

Raymond’s father is bitter, hard, abusive. His words cut. They’re sharp, spoken to do damage and they don’t fail. But Raymond has a gift. He has a gift that opens doors for him. He also has a decision to make. He too, like you – like all of us – has to decide whether he will always choose love.

You can read more about Raymond in Love Pour Over Me.