Love is a Choice

...and it's complicated

We love to say “God is Love.”
It’s elegant. It’s comforting. It’s true.

And also—if we’re being honest—it can feel complicated.

Because if your experience of love was conditional…
If love was withdrawn when you disappointed someone…
If love meant silence, endurance, or disappearing parts of yourself…

Then hearing “God is Love” may not land as reassurance.
It may land as confusion. Or worse—as spiritual gaslighting.

The same is true if your early experiences of God were shaped by fear, punishment, or shame. When that’s the case, equating God with love can feel less like good news and more like denial of your lived experience.

So before we spiritualize this too quickly, I want to slow way down and say something plainly:

Choosing love is not always natural.
It is not always comfortable.
And it is not always something we feel ready to do.

Sometimes choosing love feels like asking more of us than we think we have to give.

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When Love Carries History

For many of us, the word love carries history.
And so does the word God.

In the spiritual tradition I teach from, we understand God not as a being “out there,” but as the very ground of Being itself—the intelligence, life, and love that animates everything. In this view, love is not something God does. Love is what God is.

And yet—our experience of both God and love is always filtered through our nervous systems, our stories, and our wounds.

So when we say “Love is a choice,” we are not saying:

• Pretend you aren’t hurt.

• Override your boundaries.

• Force forgiveness before healing.

• Or bypass pain in the name of positivity.

Choosing love does not mean denying your pain or your past.
It means refusing to let those experiences be the final authority over who you become.

Love is not the absence of pain.
Love is the direction we orient toward while healing.

That’s why love takes courage.

The writer James Baldwin once said, “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”

Love removes masks.
Love asks us to show up undefended.

And of course that can feel terrifying—especially if being fully yourself was not safe earlier in your life.

So if choosing love feels hard for you—whether that’s love for yourself, for others, or for life itself—please hear this clearly:

There is nothing wrong with you.

There may simply be something in you that is still protecting itself. And the question love gently asks is not “Why are you like this?” but “Is this protection still serving you?”

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Love as Practice, Not Feeling

One of the most important shifts spiritual maturity offers is this:

Love is not just a feeling.
It is a principle.

Feelings come and go.
Principles are steady. They are always available.

Love, as a principle, is a way of orienting consciousness. It asks a simple but profound question in every moment:

From what place am I choosing to respond?

From fear—or from trust?
From contraction—or from openness?
From my most wounded self—or from my most remembered self?

This is where love becomes a practice.

As bell hooks wrote, “Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action.”

Love is not something we wait to feel.
It is something we decide to practice.

And that decision matters most—not when it’s easy—but when it would be simpler to harden.

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Learning Love the Long Way Around

For me, learning to choose love required some unglamorous inner work. I had to learn how to “reparent” myself—developing skills as an adult that many people learn in childhood, like how to love and be loved without fear.

That work was hard. And honestly, it made me angry at times. Not because my parents failed me, but because many of my wounds came from things I misunderstood as a child—stories I carried forward without ever questioning them.

But looking back now, I can trace a direct line from every genuinely good thing in my life to that inner work.

Over time, choosing love stopped feeling like effort and started feeling like alignment. I learned that choosing authentic, unconditional love was not weakness—it was choosing God. Choosing grace. Choosing to live in the flow of life instead of standing outside it, trying to control the river.

When we choose love, we choose life.

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A Quiet, Courageous Example

During Black History Month, it feels important to honor not only grand speeches and sweeping movements, but also quiet, daily acts of spiritual courage.

In 1960, Ruby Bridges was six years old when she became the first Black child to integrate an all-white elementary school in New Orleans. Every morning, she walked into that school escorted by federal marshals. Every day, she sat alone in a classroom because white parents refused to send their children.

Years later, Ruby shared that her parents taught her to pray for the people who were yelling at her—not because they were right, but because they were afraid.

No one taught her to hate.
She was taught to love.

Not as a feeling.
As a practice.

Ruby Bridges reminds us that choosing love does not mean pretending harm isn’t happening. It means refusing to let fear shape who we become.

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Choosing Again

Choosing love does not mean being nice.
It means being whole.

It does not mean we stop telling the truth.
It means we tell the truth without losing ourselves.

And it is not a one-time decision. It is a series of small, ordinary choices.

So if you’re wondering how to live this in real life, here’s a gentle place to start:

• Pause when something activates you. Breathe.

• Reorient—not toward perfection, but toward gentleness and grace.

• Remember who you are beneath the reaction.

Love is not something we wait to feel worthy of.
Love is something we practice ourselves into.

And every time we choose love—especially when fear or anger or hopelessness is loud—we participate in the healing of our own lives and the world we share.

Love lives here.
Not because it is easy.
But because we choose it.