The Beauty of Love: An Aro/Ace Perspective
Kayla Ponder
Day 1 of 3: What is Love?
“So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”*
—1 John 4:16 (NRSV)
I think about love a lot.
Before I came to realize I was on the aromantic and asexual spectrums, I had a lot of shame around love or, rather, a lack thereof. It’s not that I never felt love; I just felt it differently than others. I rarely understood the feelings that were described to me about crushes and romantic relationships. This type of love felt intangible to me, and because I couldn’t understand it, I felt ashamed of myself.
I know I am not the only one who has felt this way. The expectation of being with someone—of finding The One—ends up being at the forefront of many of our conversations. We’ve probably all heard the same questions and comments: “Anyone in your life yet?” “Well when you get married...” “You’ll find someone!”
These questions and comments bring about expectations of not only if, but when. Such expectations of ‘what love is’ lead to confusion with those of us who just don’t get it. These expectations cause many of us to doubt our own feelings and expressions because we’re afraid we are expressing love the wrong way.
So how, then, do we define love? How can love be expressed outside of what has been taught to us?
During my growth and discovery of finding out what it means to identify as aromantic and asexual, I began to think about what love means to me and the challenges of expressing that love. I had always known that there was more to love than what I had learned, so I set out to discover what was missing. In my discovery, I have learned that love can come in many different shapes and provide their own special kind of intimacy.
I hope that over these next few devotional days together, we will learn to understand and grasp onto these different kinds of love, navigate them for ourselves and others, and challenge the ways love has been defined.
As we prepare ourselves for the next two days, I invite you to think about what love means to you and to count the number of ways you see love in your daily life.
Beloved Love of the universe, I thank you for your gift of love. As I embrace this love, so too will I share that same love to those around me
Kayla Ponder (she/her)