Love Expectations

I love my sister. She’s just about the best thing in the world. We have a lot of fun together no matter what we do, and we can talk for hours. Plus she’s the best person to shop with. We have an incredible relationship, for which I’ve very thankful.

It wasn’t always like this. We’ve always been close, but sometimes we fought the way sisters or wild cats do. There was a lot of back and forth in the old days, not unlike any friendship.

You know how friendships are governed by all these rules? “A friend does this,” or “a friend would never do that.” Friends – especially sisters – are expected to say certain things, not say other things, and behave certain ways depending on the situation.

The problem is, people can’t agree on friendship expectations. Like who calls who when. It always annoys me when people say to me, “you never call me!” All I can think is, don’t you have a phone too?

Friends, and sisters, let you down. With my sister, I used to think about how I could make her love me. Like a great employee, how could I make myself indispensable to her so that she would keep me around even though I continued to screw up from time to time? I told her once, trying to solidify our friendship, that she had to love me because we were related. Wisely, she responded, “I don’t have to love you.”

She’s right. She doesn’t have to love me, or be my friend. I took this realization hard. I could never do enough or be enough to make her love me. The force of my will was not strong enough. All I could do was love her.

(By now you’re thinking “duh.” Sometimes it takes me a while to put these things together.)

And then I realized that’s exactly how God is toward us. He just loves us, without requiring anything in return. Romans 5:8 says, “This is how God demonstrated his love for us: while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Paul (the author of Romans) also phrases it this way: while we were still enemies of Christ, he died for us.

God is always taking the first step toward us, and making peace with us before we do anything to deserve or earn it. He doesn’t love us because we deserve it. He just loves us.

And that’s how I decided to love my sister. It was an experiment. I would love her just because I wanted to love her, without expecting anything back from her. If she loved me, great! If she didn’t love me, that would be sad but I would be okay with it. Whether or not she liked me or forgave me or was nice to me would have nothing to do with how I loved her.

It was the most freeing experiment of my life. I can’t believe what I have learned from it. Now, both of us are free from my expectations … whether or not she behaves like I think she should has no power over our friendship. I am her friend because I want to be her friend, not because she’s nice to me or says the right things or calls me often enough. I just love her.

I don’t even know how to explain the freedom that comes from this. It has spilled over into so many areas of my life. I used to think that if my husband broke certain rules I would divorce him, no question. Now, I can’t imagine my marriage being held hostage to such rules. Now I am free to love him because I choose to, not because of how he behaves.

None of this means that I don’t have healthy boundaries or that I’m a doormat. Love really is about freedom, not chains. And I think the only way I can continue such an experiment is because I know what it feels like to be loved unconditionally. I can love her that way because I know I am loved that way. I have experienced God’s love so profoundly that it enables me to love others. Isaiah 31:3 says, “I have loved you with an everlasting glove. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.”

Have you experienced someone loving you without expectation? What do you expect of your friends?