The Power of Love

When you’re depressed or in a psychotic crisis, it’s normal to believe our negativity is everything there is, but the power of love and light is a constant we can tap into.

Guest post by Sónia Monteiro

Pop culture immortalized this sequence of words that gives title to at least two well-known songs, one by Celine Dion, another by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

Both poems sing that facet of love between lovers.

But there is more to love than eros.

According to the great academic and writer C. S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves, there are at least four types of love: Affection, Friendship, Eros and Charity.

All four features provide forms of love transmuted into different aspects of reality that share a common ground, or should I say, a common God.

Here’s what Lewis wrote in The Four Loves, on Friendship:

”This love, free from instinct, free from all duties but those which love has freely assumed, almost wholly free from jealousy, and free without qualification from the need to be needed, is eminently spiritual. It is the sort of love one can imagine between angels. Have we here found a natural love, which is Love itself?”

Although Lewis’ statement doesn’t refer directly to a power of love, we all know from our experience that the love we share, that which comes from within, also lifts us up and changes us gently.

The power of love in mental health

To me, it is a force of nature which can be directed by God to our own blessing.

Both mental health issues I’ve experienced transformed my ability to feel love either as a giver or as a receiver of love.

Depression, for instance, overwhelmed me with negative emotions like fear, shame, sadness or sorrow, which shadowed both my natural loving ways and my trust in the love of others.

It was as if the world had been drained of all goodness, but really it was my focus on the negative that tricked my perception. I used to feel ashamed of my depressed self. It frustrated me greatly. I became silent and inexpressive.

During psychosis, it was another deal. The stranger my ideas, the less connected to my emotions I felt. It was like walking into one’s home after it’s been robbed. Everything is out of place and your most treasured belongings are gone. It’s hard to find anything at all in the middle of the confusion.

If you’re going through such an ordeal right now, try not to blame yourself for the tricks our minds pull on us at times, nor for the tricks others may have pulled on you, in case you are, like Freud said “surrounded by idiots”.

When you’re depressed or in a psychotic crisis, it’s normal to believe our negativity is everything there is.

Might you doubt this as “truth”? The odds might begin to change.

Doubt, after all, isn’t always negative. It can mean the rise of a new dawn. And change occurs like the break of a new day.

The power of light

The love of nature is there first thing in the morning as the morning light enters the room. It is joy to my eyes and to my mind.

It’s nature’s way to say I belong. And on top of it all is the feeling of beauty that fills me with all sorts of other positive feelings. The morning appears ravishing, and its beauty involves me in an uplifting spiral of well-being.

There are days when my focus is on the troubles of life and then the morning’s natural beauty and power over my senses get overlooked, but just because my mind is on something else, it doesn’t mean the magic is lost.

Eventually troubles pass or my focus changes and I go back to noticing the blessing of early sunshine even if there are clouds shadowing that glorious light.

Actually, it’s a given scientific fact that sunshine promotes serotonin in the brain, a chemical that is responsible for feelings of happiness.

You might think that the power of the morning light isn’t there for you, but I am under the impression that it is common to everybody as we all are part of nature.

Just like love, it is there for everyone in many different ways.

The source of love

Have you found your own source of love?

It lies within yourself as we all have the potential for participating in the whirl of love around us, even if it is as simple as contemplating the light first thing in the morning.

Light was God’s first creation, even before creating the sun.

It is an expression of His wisdom and probably the most ancient evidence of His love.

It is so powerful that all living things depend on it. In fact, light is as powerful as it is never ending.

When we get to eternity, God will dwell amongst us and we will delight in the light of His holy presence. See Revelation 21:23-24 about the New Jerusalem

And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light Revelation 21:23-24

God is love.

I hope you can feel the intensity of His calling to your heart to lead you to His holy presence in prayer and find relief through the power of His love.

This is truly real when you get to feeling God’s presence is desirable.

God is there for you to lead you through your suffering. You will find relief, I assure you. It happened to me. It will happen to you too.

Quotes to consider

Love wins over guilt any day. Richard Rohr When Things Fall Apart
Love acts like a giant magnet that pulls out of us, like iron filings, every recorded injury, every scar. Terrence Real
In Successful Psychotherapy: A Caring, Loving Relationship, psychologists C.H. Patterson and Hidore admit that psychotherapy is in chaos. Their solution is worth a second look. Profession helping efforts, they suggest, should abandon identifying specific diagnosable disorders and coming up with specific technical treatment plans. They should instead focus on one simple yet profound idea – that the essence of all successful psychotherapy is love. They go so far as to suggest that their book could well have been titled Psychotherapy: The Purchase of Love. Larry Crabb

Questions to consider

How does nature inspire love to you?
How do you feel about nature as a gift of love from God to you?
Why does the love of nature count as a form of love to you?

Sónia Monteiro

Sónia was born and raised in central Portugal, in a small village next to the city of Coimbra, where she attended the University studying Journalism. She got severely ill with depression before she could finish her studies. This would be the beginning of a long journey towards the cure. While she was able to come out of the depression, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia almost twenty years later.

In the meantime, she has worked as a caretaker for ill and elderly people. Recently she had to stop her activity due to complications of her illness but had the opportunity to pursue an undergraduate degree in Modern Languages, including English.

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