love

In spite of the chaos of life,
Regardless of the fears about jobs and life after graduation,
Through the pain of drifting friends and watching loved ones die,
Somewhere in the middle of the turbulance of my sin and doubt that You hold my life in your hands,
I see how much you really love me.

I can go to sleep distraught and unsure, only to wake up in the middle of the night to feel You softly stroke my face and whisper that it's all going to be okay.  That I need to stop looking for joy and love and satisfaction because I can find that only in You.  Where my life goes from here amounts to nothing if I'm not on that journey next to You.  Where You are is where I want to be.  You forgive.  You know me better than I know myself.  You give abundantly.  You love me.


I have never known such a pure and unfailing love like this.

Love has always been a difficult task for me.  I think, growing up around family members dying, I learned that it hurts to lose someone that you love.  So I pulled away from everyone at an early age in an attempt to protect myself.  It's hard for me to be myself around my family.  It's hard for me to be intimate in a romantic relationship.  It's hard for me to verbally tell someone how much I love them.  I don't like making eye contact when I talk to people and I don't like giving hugs.  I believed the lie that if I didn't allow myself to feel, then it wouldn't hurt as bad if I lost them.

But I've been learning that numbness only adds to the pain.  We are meant to feel.  We are meant to love.  And we are meant to have intimate friendships and relationships.  Life is nothing without love.  Someone recently told me that "Hugs aren't just for you.  They are for the other person, too."

Yes.  The people in my life deserve hugs from me because they deserve to know how much I care for them.  I never realized the importance of love and community because I never experienced pure and unfailing love until Jesus gave it so willingly to me.  I honestly believed it was something people could get by without.  But now I know that life is nothing without it.  It's so good to love.  It's so good to be loved.

It's so good to feel.
I am learning how much You really love me.

1 John 4:7-12--
⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

I never understood these verses to their fulness until now.  I took them as me just having to love because I'm "called to."  Because Jesus loves me I have to "love" everyone, which I lamely defined as me being "nice" and "giving."  I knew I needed to "spread the Gospel by love" (but I honestly didn't even know what any of that meant).


No.  These verses are saying when you recognize how great and vast God's love is for you, that's when you will love your brothers and sisters.  Love is an amazing gift from God.  Love is pure.  And good.  Love is way more necessary that we ever imagined it to be.  When we recognize the depth and height of His love we cannot help but overflow that cup onto other people.  We cannot help but want to give others the very gift that our own souls feed off of.

And in the process we will be made whole.  We are made for community to have true relationships and to live out the mystery of love.  There will be no more pushing away because I'm scared to get hurt.  There will only be the healing power of love that captivates every part of my soul.

This is a secular song but the lyrics sort of reminds me of a conversation I've been having with Jesus these past few weeks:


Heart beats fast.  Colors and promises.  How to be brave?  How can I love when I'm afraid to fall?  But watching You stand alone.  All of my doubt suddenly goes away somehow.  One step closer.


"I have died every day waiting for you.  Darling don't be afraid.  I have loved you for a thousand years, I'll love you for a thousand more.  And all along I believed I would find you, time has brought your heart to me.  I have loved you for a thousand years, I'll love you for a thousand more."

I don't need to be afraid to fall when I see how Jesus "stood alone" and died on the cross for ME.  His blood covers me every day as He waits so patiently for me to understand.  His love has washed me clean.  Love is good.  There's nothing to be afraid of because it is so full of color and promise.

And so I am growing and changing and learning.  Trying to make eye contact at all times.  Trying to hug without pulling away quickly.  Trying to forgive even when it's hard.  Trying to replace (most of) the sarcasm and jokes with encouraging words and truths of how much I appreciate them in my life.  Trying to feel for the first time since I was just a small child.

Trying to love like You love me.