I normally don't write about love or relationships. It's very vulnerable place and if you know me at all that's not an easy thing for me. In this world we see different images of love from the moment we (as women, maybe men) watch our first Disney princess movie to trademark movies like the Notebook and the Titanic of undying love or love that takes a life because the heart can't go on without it. It is all very romantic and speaks directly to my daydreaming heart. Realistically these images are not what love is and I'm okay with that.
Love in REAL life, for me, has always been seen as fleeting and fickle. However, in 2012 God made plans to give me a glimpse of what His true love looks like. This revelation, though marvelous and breath-taking was something I didn't understand and it scared me.
America is plagued with divorce. People get married because the feeling of being in love guides them to essentially jump off of a cliff and they eventually find that love had fooled them into a fall of faith that never ends. So they pull the parachute and abandon the journey down because feelings no longer guide them. Until we understand that love is a verb, that is active horizontally first and then vertically, love will continue to be fickle and fleeting.
I grew up watching a broken marriage. I saw nothing else. I know I am not alone, I know there are many of us, sadly. Until recently I marked myself as a victim of such a marriage. I moved away about four years ago, so I was physically far from it and I could no longer see the affects of it except every 6 months or so for 2 weeks. However, because I kept the mentality of a victim to my parents marriage it continued to hold its grip on my life and in my relationships. Some part of me knew this but I never stayed with a boy long enough to change anything or to recognize how large this fear was in my life.
Until that relationship did come.
I get this picture of God wincing His eyebrow as he could already feel the frustration, hurt and anger that was to come as He was about to refine me in the fire. Then I see this wince break into a warm glow and a gentle smile as He also saw the end result, something I have yet to fully see.
I dated for 10 months and it was packed full of emotions of happiness and confusion, on my part. I was with a patient and loving man who was being used as an instrument of God to help me understand love. I am so very lucky :).In this relationship I believe I was loved unconditionally, however I didn't recognize this love very much, just a few minutes at a time and then logic of what I had always known cast its shadow over this beautiful Love. Every time this Love would show its face so would God because true Love (whether in a relationship, friendship or in family) doesn't present itself without Him. He would remind me how infinitely more He loved me than this imperfect boy did and it was not something I could fathom. It's as if I stood at the base of the Mount Sinai looking upon a great cloud of smoke, knowing the Lord was near and fearing that if I were to cross over I would surely be destroyed (Exodus 19). Instead I trembled.God had revealed something about Himself I had never seen but that every follower of Christ gets a revelation of time and time again. His love.
This relationship I was in, was actually a picture of my relationship with Him. To begin, I doubt God's love constantly. I fear my actions may distance Him from me or cause Him to turn his face away in shame as he looks at me and the sins I fall into. I have trouble trusting God because walking with Him is painful at times and I often allow myself to think that He's playing a game with me instead of recognizing His goodness and trusting in His sovereignty. I want a relationship with Him in which I have control of the present and the future. Even admitting to all this unbelief is so hard, I feel like a disciple who has walked with Him for many years, knows His voice, His truth and yet I still ask Him, who are you? Are you the King that I have been waiting for? Are you the God I can trust?
It also mirrored my relationship with God because I loved every second of being in it despite my precautions. Through the good and the bad, my heart beat a little faster in it. I also knew I was with my best friend who made me laugh, who listened to me, rejoiced with me, comforted me and allowed me the freedom to do the same in my own quirky ways. I was with someone who sought me out everyday to say hello with inviting charm that wrapped my whole day in love, if I allowed it.
It did not mirror my relationship, in that no person can carry another person's world, not like God can. No person is responsible for delivering a person from fear that took root long before they came together. No person can fill my neediness; only God's hands were made to hold my neediness, no matter how big or small those needs are. A person can keep me safe to a degree but He's my only refuge in times of trouble, especially when I don't understand the fear and the frustration. It is also true that one may be able to share the burden but He is the only One who can bear the whole burden of my life and many others. He works with me and for me and causes me to understand it so that it changes me. That's how it's different. No matter who I'm with they don't hold these things, He does.
Now, I am not saying I'm all better or that I have it all figured out because I am not and I don't. God saw a girl frozen with fear even when the relationship had given her no reason to fear and His heart broke. He took action because He believed that all His children deserve relationships without fear because perfect love casts out all fear. So now, He's answering and walking me through the questions that no one else could answer about my fear and in time I will shed these scales.
Love has broken me and I imagine it will again. You see, I'm learning that you cannot love without taking the risk of being broken. Whether it's a relationship that's for forever or that's for a season you'll be broken again and again. I forget that God is full of sweet paradox's. We think that love is somehow supposed to make everything come together and that it will keep us safe, with Him it does but it's also very dangerous. It asks us to lay our lives down on the line and to risk it all. Only in this weakness can He become our everlasting strength. Only in this brokenness can we learn to love even more! God is a risky God, He doesn't EVER do things that scream comfort. This reminds me that yes, my heart aches but it only awaits its promise. And although at this time it wasn't a magnificent boy, I know that the promise that is slowly revealing itself everyday that I put my trust in Him is going to be far greater than I could ever imagine.
Most importantly I have to remember the first love story that I was apart of and it started long before the earth was created. My life is about a love story between my Creator and I. Everything else has just been a gift.
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.
Love in REAL life, for me, has always been seen as fleeting and fickle. However, in 2012 God made plans to give me a glimpse of what His true love looks like. This revelation, though marvelous and breath-taking was something I didn't understand and it scared me.
America is plagued with divorce. People get married because the feeling of being in love guides them to essentially jump off of a cliff and they eventually find that love had fooled them into a fall of faith that never ends. So they pull the parachute and abandon the journey down because feelings no longer guide them. Until we understand that love is a verb, that is active horizontally first and then vertically, love will continue to be fickle and fleeting.
I grew up watching a broken marriage. I saw nothing else. I know I am not alone, I know there are many of us, sadly. Until recently I marked myself as a victim of such a marriage. I moved away about four years ago, so I was physically far from it and I could no longer see the affects of it except every 6 months or so for 2 weeks. However, because I kept the mentality of a victim to my parents marriage it continued to hold its grip on my life and in my relationships. Some part of me knew this but I never stayed with a boy long enough to change anything or to recognize how large this fear was in my life.
Until that relationship did come.
I get this picture of God wincing His eyebrow as he could already feel the frustration, hurt and anger that was to come as He was about to refine me in the fire. Then I see this wince break into a warm glow and a gentle smile as He also saw the end result, something I have yet to fully see.
I dated for 10 months and it was packed full of emotions of happiness and confusion, on my part. I was with a patient and loving man who was being used as an instrument of God to help me understand love. I am so very lucky :).In this relationship I believe I was loved unconditionally, however I didn't recognize this love very much, just a few minutes at a time and then logic of what I had always known cast its shadow over this beautiful Love. Every time this Love would show its face so would God because true Love (whether in a relationship, friendship or in family) doesn't present itself without Him. He would remind me how infinitely more He loved me than this imperfect boy did and it was not something I could fathom. It's as if I stood at the base of the Mount Sinai looking upon a great cloud of smoke, knowing the Lord was near and fearing that if I were to cross over I would surely be destroyed (Exodus 19). Instead I trembled.God had revealed something about Himself I had never seen but that every follower of Christ gets a revelation of time and time again. His love.
This relationship I was in, was actually a picture of my relationship with Him. To begin, I doubt God's love constantly. I fear my actions may distance Him from me or cause Him to turn his face away in shame as he looks at me and the sins I fall into. I have trouble trusting God because walking with Him is painful at times and I often allow myself to think that He's playing a game with me instead of recognizing His goodness and trusting in His sovereignty. I want a relationship with Him in which I have control of the present and the future. Even admitting to all this unbelief is so hard, I feel like a disciple who has walked with Him for many years, knows His voice, His truth and yet I still ask Him, who are you? Are you the King that I have been waiting for? Are you the God I can trust?
It also mirrored my relationship with God because I loved every second of being in it despite my precautions. Through the good and the bad, my heart beat a little faster in it. I also knew I was with my best friend who made me laugh, who listened to me, rejoiced with me, comforted me and allowed me the freedom to do the same in my own quirky ways. I was with someone who sought me out everyday to say hello with inviting charm that wrapped my whole day in love, if I allowed it.
It did not mirror my relationship, in that no person can carry another person's world, not like God can. No person is responsible for delivering a person from fear that took root long before they came together. No person can fill my neediness; only God's hands were made to hold my neediness, no matter how big or small those needs are. A person can keep me safe to a degree but He's my only refuge in times of trouble, especially when I don't understand the fear and the frustration. It is also true that one may be able to share the burden but He is the only One who can bear the whole burden of my life and many others. He works with me and for me and causes me to understand it so that it changes me. That's how it's different. No matter who I'm with they don't hold these things, He does.
Now, I am not saying I'm all better or that I have it all figured out because I am not and I don't. God saw a girl frozen with fear even when the relationship had given her no reason to fear and His heart broke. He took action because He believed that all His children deserve relationships without fear because perfect love casts out all fear. So now, He's answering and walking me through the questions that no one else could answer about my fear and in time I will shed these scales.
Love has broken me and I imagine it will again. You see, I'm learning that you cannot love without taking the risk of being broken. Whether it's a relationship that's for forever or that's for a season you'll be broken again and again. I forget that God is full of sweet paradox's. We think that love is somehow supposed to make everything come together and that it will keep us safe, with Him it does but it's also very dangerous. It asks us to lay our lives down on the line and to risk it all. Only in this weakness can He become our everlasting strength. Only in this brokenness can we learn to love even more! God is a risky God, He doesn't EVER do things that scream comfort. This reminds me that yes, my heart aches but it only awaits its promise. And although at this time it wasn't a magnificent boy, I know that the promise that is slowly revealing itself everyday that I put my trust in Him is going to be far greater than I could ever imagine.
Most importantly I have to remember the first love story that I was apart of and it started long before the earth was created. My life is about a love story between my Creator and I. Everything else has just been a gift.
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.
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