Love-Longing

winter berries bestIt’s a gloriously slow, snowy morning…quiet and peaceful. All my sweethearts are warm, cozy, and asleep.  Me….warm and cozy in my comfy chair, pondering the truth of God’s love.

Recently a friend challenged me to consider what love really is.  What does it mean to be loved by God?  What does it mean to be loved by another?  What does love look like in a relationship?  What is it supposed to feel like?  I think those were all her suggested questions for pondering…there were probably more, but you get the idea.

I am accepting that challenge.

It’s something I want to understand.  I need to understand. Sometimes I struggle to allow myself to be loved.  I think in the back of my head and heart I’m waiting for someone to say, “Nope.  You aren’t worth it.  I thought I loved you, but you just really haven’t lived up to my ideals. You are not ideal.”

Maybe it’s because I’m so intimately acquainted with my failings and my fears and my frustrations…I know myself.  

Maybe it’s because I don’t really understand how I can be loved for me, not just for what I do or say or don’t do or don’t say.

Maybe it’s because I don’t understand how much the Father really and truly loves me.  I can’t comprehend it.  I can’t grasp it.  I can’t believe it.

Intellectually, I believe it. But in every other way, I don’t seem to get it.  

Why in the world does He want to love me, much less actually love me?  

What is it about me that is lovable?  What is it about me that is beautiful to Him?

My life has been marked by conditional love…if my behavior, my actions, my accomplishments, my looks, my work, my spirituality, the circumstances all work out, if no one else is available…then I’m quite lovable to some.  But if the stars aren’t aligned then not so much…

I think I’m finally understanding that I can’t make people love me (nor should I) and wondrously I can’t make God not love me.

Sigh.  There is so much comfort in that.  I wish I knew how to live like I know it.

Love….such a huge concept, and yet so simple.

It all comes together in three little words.

God is love.

Three profound little words.  Three syllables.  Three short little words in a short little sentence that encompass all the meaning the world could ever truly need.

I need love because I need God.  

I am daring love to change me.  Daring love to strengthen me.

I can do this, because I believe that God speaks truth when He says that He is love.

Love isn’t some feeling I have to feel to live.  It is a Person I have to know to survive.

A capital P person.  

I keep thinking that some little p person is going to help me understand love.  How unfair of me!  No one can possibly love me like Jesus does.  They can try…and honestly please do! But I can’t expect the love-longing I have in me to be filled by any person.  

What person could possibly love me perfectly?  

I love my children more than I thought I could possibly love another human being and I fail miserably at it.  Daily.  How is another person supposed to step into my far less than perfect life and love me perfectly?  

What would someone loving me perfectly look like anyway?  I mean really.  

Sometimes I think I really want the Hallmark movie love…the fairytale, pursue me, happily ever after kind of love.. I thought I had that…but clearly I did not.  I kind of had the Lifetime movie love…drama, adultery, betrayal.

But really and truly I want the kind of love that God talks about…the lay-down-your-life love.  The no-fear love.  The unconditional love.   The you are such a mess and I love you anyway love.

Already have it.

Have always had it.

Just keep forgetting it.

I believe that when I grasp how loved I am by God, I will be better at receiving love from others.  When I understand that I’m worth loving because I’m the me God made me to be, then I can love without fear.

And be loved without fear.

I’m working on it. I’m making an effort to allow myself to be loved and to not try so hard to earn love…to let go of the trying.   To let go of the working at being lovable.

I’m probably more lovable when I’m not trying so hard anyway.

There are verses about love that I love. Verses that remind me that love is more than just feeling warm and cuddly.  Love is bold and daring.  Love is action.  Love is strength.

There is no fear in love because perfect love casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. 1 John 4:18

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins.  1 Peter 4:8

And over all these virtues put on love which binds them all together in perfect unity. Colossians 3:14

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and in truth. 1 John 3:18

I love you Lord, my strength.  Psalm 18:1

I have loved.  I have trusted when it was really, really difficult to trust.  I have leaned in to anxiety and pushed through fear and determined to know how to love well and received love well and see God work

I have succeeded and I have failed.  I have opened up my heart and I have closed it as quickly…only to break it back open again.  I have softened my heart and hardened it…and allowed it to be massaged back to tenderness. I have laid awake with fear and closed my eyes in prayer for peace.  I have determined to understand this thing called love.

It is challenging.  It is terrifying.

Love is all the beautiful things and all the heartbreaking things.  But isn’t that life?  Isn’t life about living messy?  

Love is messy..  

When Jesus was beaten, whipped, and bloodied for me, it was messy.

When Jesus carried that horrific cross down the Via Dolorosa, it was messy.

When Jesus hung on that scandalous cross dying, it was messy.

A magnificent mess of love.    

God loves me in my messiness.  God loves me in my chaos.  God loves me in my fears, doubts, anxious thoughts, and frustrations.  God loves me regardless of how well I love Him.  

He will always love me.

I pray my heart grasps the deep, deep love of Jesus.  

I pray my heart opens wide for that love.

I pray my heart learns from that love how to give and receive love well.

Love is worth it.

My Savior tells me that I’m worth it.  

 

Middle of the Night Thinking

night-skySleeping has become a bit problematic for me lately.  In fact I’d say that sleeplessness has become the defining feature of my nights, so much so that I almost dread putting my head down on my pillows…almost.  I’m so dang tired that I gotta at least try to sleep.

Falling asleep.  Not a problem.  Staying asleep.  Feels impossible.

I find myself tossing and turning and thinking. Sometimes that thinking turns into panicking.  Overwhelming fear.  Heart palpitations.  Heavy chest. Shallow breathing.  Fear that makes me want to crawl out of my skin.

And if I weren’t so tired I’d just get up and do something…anything to take my mind off of my fear…off of my thoughts.  But I’m tired…bone-weary, aching joints tired.  And in some weird way I don’t think I want to go downstairs and watch TV and pretend that I’m not afraid.

I feel like I might have to feel this to deal with this to overcome this.  Something can’t be fixed if I don’t acknowledge it, right?

This past month these episodes of over-fearful-thinking have happened a fair amount.  It isn’t even about one thing.  Most of the time, in the morning everything feels a little less daunting.  Still concerns, but not terrors. Am I going crazy?  I’m not saying that to be silly, I’m truly sharing a fear…another fear.

I feel like there is just so much to do and think about and I feel like I can’t do it all…all the thinking.  All the little things and all the big things.

Thinking about my children.  Each one with unique needs, concerns, hopes, dreams, struggles, decisions, issues.

Thinking about the house.  Repairs. Cracks. Drips. Wobbles. Clutter.

Thinking about work.  Lesson plans, class management, expectations, assessments, communication, and time management

Thinking about finances.  How?  How do I get in a better place?  How do I deal with the guilt of decisions I thought were good, but haven’t had the desired effect?  How do I fix the mess?

Thinking about relationships.  How do I love well?  Trust again?  How do I let go of fear when sometimes it’s so physically overwhelming I can barely breathe?  How do I let myself be loved?  How do I make friends when I barely have time for my children?  How do I mourn the changes that have happened with friendships I thought would never change?

Thinking about church.  Thinking about family situations.  Thinking about how to take care of my mom.  Thinking about groceries, toilet paper, toothpaste, and Band-Aids. Thinking about oil changes, car batteries, tire rotations, and brake pads.

It all makes my head spin.

And in the middle of the night, it makes my body toss and turn and my head hurt and my chest ache and my heart pound.

I don’t know what to do.  I don’t have a spiritually astute solution.  I pray hard.  I beg for rest.  I let things slide.  I reduce caffeine.  I make lists.  I tear up lists.  I pray harder.

But things don’t get better.  And not sleeping has so many repercussions…mentally, emotionally, physically, vocationally, and spiritually.

And then I wonder, is it all spiritual?  Is it because I’ve lost my focus on Jesus?  Because I’ve let the cares of this world overwhelm me? Because the weight of my own failures feels too great to carry.  Because I can’t seem to figure out how to walk this path gracefully, without stumbling.  Falling on my knees…not how I want to fall…in prayer.  I fall in fear, in failure, in fatigue.

And I think, wasn’t it just last week?  What did I even write about?  What did God lay on my broken sometimes healing heart?  What did He reveal to me about Himself that brought me such hope? I don’t have the faintest idea.  Am I truly that tired that I don’t remember the hope?

I had to reread my own words.  How pathetic.  I remember now.

All things are possible with Him.  This life.  This is possible with Him.

Why does sleep, rest and peace still feel impossible?

Sorry, I’m fixated on the sleep thing – it just seems so important, vital, life-giving.  I’m afraid of what will happen if this continues.  I’m afraid of being ill.

I’m trying to trust.  Trying to trust that this season of sleeplessness is part of the plan.  What plan could this be, God?  Why?  What purpose when life is already so challenging?

Tomorrow I go back to work – I was hoping that I’d be well-rested.  Unless there is a miracle tonight, I’ll go back as exhausted as I left.

Bummer.

Ugh.  I sound like such a complainer.  I’m sorry.  I’m wondering though is anyone else struggling to understand why things are the way they are?

I mean I get the whole “in this world you will have trouble” thing, I guess I’m not getting the “fear not for I have overcome the world” thing.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart!  I have overcome the world.”  John 16:33

What does that mean for this place?  This place of sleeplessness and fear and anxious thoughts and overwhelming demands?  Those are the troubles…for me.  What is the overcoming?

Overcoming.

“To get the better of in a struggle or conflict; conquer; defeat; to overcome the enemy.” (Dictionary.com)

To get the better of.

What an interesting phrase.  This struggle has definitely gotten the better of me.

A new day.  A new month.  A new year.  Seems like a good time to turn the table.  But how?

Especially because my table is upside down.  It needs to get flipped completely before it can even be turned.  But maybe that’s the point?

Maybe all my thinking needs to be flipped.

I’m so focused on the struggle (again) – I can’t see any good.

When I was in the process of editing my book, the editor commented on a section where I shared about getting up early and staying up late to study the Bible and pray.  She said that it wasn’t realistic.  Nobody would believe that that was what I was actually doing.  But it was what I was actually doing.  It was the only way I survived that season – God upheld me.

Maybe He is asking me to do that again?  Maybe, in the middle of those sleepless nights, He is whispering in my ear, “Dearest, trust me.”

Trust me with your fears.  Trust me with your anxious thoughts.  Trust me with your mistakes and failures and hopelessness.  Trust me with your anger, frustrations, and irritations.  Trust me with you children, your relationship, your home, your work, your finances, your time.  Trust me with your love.

I think I do, but then I toss and turn and tear up and I don’t understand why it all has to be so hard.

I want to, but I don’t understand what it looks like when things seem so daunting and hopeless, particularly in the middle of the night.

I don’t know how to stop the ache.  I don’t know how to not feel.

There has to be something that can be done…something that can make a difference.  Because, honestly, in those moments I really feel like I’d do anything to get away from all those feelings and thoughts that beat me down.

They are relentless in their assault.

And I’m tired of just lying there taking it.

Time to turn or flip the table…or turn and flip myself and my thinking.

My thinking needs to change.

I’ve learned this before.  Said this before.  Written this before.

I KNOW THIS.

Thankfulness.  Gratitude. Gratefulness.

I know this thankfulness thing.  I know it is the answer.

In those moments when I despair, pray thankfulness.

In those moments of fear, focus on blessings.

Simple. Profound. Powerful.

I can rest in that.  I can redeem the time from tossing and turning to thankfulness and trust.

I can do this.

All things are possible with God.

I can do this…with Him.