loving

Am I Lovable?

/ Sue Birdseye / 7 Comments

ImageI’ve caught the spring cleaning bug…unfortunately at the moment I’ve always actually caught some other bug so I don’t have the energy to do all that I planned to do today. L

But I did have enough energy to organize some shelves in my bedroom.  I found a journal from a while back and read through much of it.  I found something that I thought I’d share:

                Tonight I realized that I really don’t believe anyone REALLY loves me.  That’s a problem.  A big problem.  No wonder I struggle with anything negative that happens – I’m not at all secure in being loved.  I suppose that means I’m probably not that secure in God’s love either.  Everything…EVERYTHING…in my life speaks to the reality of that love and yet I question it?  What’s wrong with me?  Seriously.

                I can’t keep going back to the past to define myself – I’ve got to define myself by the present.  Is that right though?  The present?  Or is it more than that?  Defining myself as a Daughter of the King who is faithfully and constantly loved by Him.

                I know God’s love is completely unconditional.  But it has seemed like everyone else’s is so conditional.  Some of those feelings and fears are irrational…some are based in fact, but is it THE fact I want to base my life on?  No!  I want to base my life on the real and true fact that Jesus loves me without condition.  I’m lovable because He loves me. 

                Maybe I need to believe that better…that I’m lovable…that someone might possibly love me just for me…just as I am.  God has shown that to be true…He loves me just as I am.  That reminds me of that beautiful hymn…I used to sing it for my kids at bedtime.  Maybe I should start again. 

“Just as I am without a plea, but that thy blood was shed for me.  And that thou bidst me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come…I come.”  I bet I would love others better if I grasped how loved I truly am.

That was over a year ago and I believe that God has worked mightily in my life regarding this, but I still struggle at times.  Still want to be assured that I’m worth the whole “love you” thing.  I suppose it is kind of understandable based on my ex-husband’s actions, but certainly not a place I want to remain.  And I definitely think God doesn’t want me there either.  And probably everyone else in my life would prefer I leave this place as well.

When I think of love, one of the first verses that pops into my mind is:

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  Matthew 22:37-39

That’s a whole lot of lovin’!  Loving God, loving others, loving myself.  Isn’t it interesting that it sometimes is most difficult to love ourselves….to believe we are worth loving.

And love…it isn’t something I do because I feel like it.  I love because I choose to, because God made me to love.

When I found out about my husband’s adultery, I had to make a deliberate and crazy choice to love the man anyway.  I now understand choosing to love someone.  I know the sacrifice and challenges of that decision.  I believe in this case it was a God-honoring decision and He most definitely gave me the grace to do it.  Absolutely not in my own strength, but God’s!

The love I was able to offer my husband was because God’s love was spilling out of me.  I was not the source of it…it did not come from me.   I love because there is love in my life because I have Him.

After all, love is never apart from God.  How can it be when God is love?

…God is love, and whoever abides in love, abides in God, and God abides in him.  1 John 4:16

So if I have God in my life…if I abide in Him and He abides in me…how can I not be lovable?  And loving.

It isn’t about how someone loves me or doesn’t love me…although that certainly can make me feel wonderfully great or tragically awful.  I have certainly felt both ends of the spectrum. But I know…

Love is about God.  It really is.

Any and all the love in the world is only because of God. And amazingly He is loving and gracious enough to offer that same love to us without condition.

God’s love is ours simply because He loves us.

For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.  I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you.  Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you.   Isaiah 43:3-4

 I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.   Again I will build you, and you shall be built.  Jeremiah 31:3

We are the objects of His affection.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.  1 John 3:1

We are lovable because we are loved deeply by God.

In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  1 John 4:10

We are lovable because we were made to love and be loved.

We love because he first loved us.  1 John 4:19

We are lovable because God says so.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.  John 15:9

I believe God loves me…He has proven it.  How can I doubt my ability to be loved…lovable?

No matter what someone says or does to me that feeds my fear of being unlovable, God says nothing at all can separate me from His love.  Nothing.  That means nothing I do or say or think or have or don’t have, nothing anyone else does or thinks or says…nothing is going to impact the Father’s love for me.  It’s true.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8:38-39

Some of us have been through a very difficult experience – and even that seems like an understatement.

Being betrayed and left by the one who promised to live life with you – the person who promised to love you no matter what life threw your way…that is a difficult thing to get over.  Things you never thought would change did.  The love you thought was a definite wasn’t…but God’s love stays the same because God stays the same.  He doesn’t ever stop loving and He doesn’t ever leave or forsake.  He will faithfully love us for eternity.

We can totally, completely, and confidently rest in the fact that we are loved.

We are indeed loveable.

Is Life Ever Gonna Be Normal?

/ Sue Birdseye / 10 Comments

cool cloud“Everything is going on around me as if nothing is happening…as if my world is not crashing…exploding…imploding…”

I remember thinking those words when my marriage began its shattering.

Nobody knew. And life continued.

I recall standing up before a class of 5th and 6th graders teaching them grammar and thinking, “How do I do this? How do I pretend that this is just a normal day? That I don’t just want to crawl into a corner and weep?”

It’s such a surreal thing…trying to be normal when everything isn’t.

I’m feeling that way again as I watch my father’s health decline dramatically.

The other day I sat next to him propping him up with my shoulder, holding his hand, and leaning in to hear his soft, mumbled words. I was struck again by life’s challenges.

I’d spent the day with my children playing at the park – running, laughing, and sweating. Now I was sitting still, crying a bit, and well…sweating  …my Dad’s room is pretty stuffy.

It’s weird to walk through all these emotions. I remember that walk when my husband left. I remember trying to make life normal and fun with my children. I’d laugh with them during the day and cry when I was alone at night. It was a truly terrible walk for a season, but I haven’t walked there in a while…until now.

Anyone who has suffered a loss or tragedy or challenge of any kind can understand…life goes on.
We still need to set alarms, pack lunches, get kids to school, do school with children, go to work, make dinner, drive to soccer games, smile at people, listen to other’s share their stories, and just plain live life.

I’m finding it difficult to figure out how to be normal anymore…I mean not that I’ve ever been completely normal (LOL!)…but how do I find normal when things keep getting wonky on me?

My prayer partner and I pray each year that this will be the year without trauma or drama….so far we are 0-6. Not a great record. BUT I will say that God continues to work in me and around me despite the decidedly difficult times.
He continues to show me He is faithful before, during, and after the troubling times.

Somehow or another, even when I can’t necessarily see it or really understand it, He makes it all bearable. At the end of the day, I realize I’ve survived. And so have all my children.

And it isn’t just survival…I’ve learned so much about myself and about Him through each heartbreak and sorrow.
God loves me and my children (and you and yours) so very much.

Lately God has been showing me how very very much He loves me and my children…and you and yours. There is no limit to His love…the amount doesn’t diminish on a bad day or even increase on a good day. He loves us perfectly and completely because He is love.

I read a quote years ago by A.W. Tozer from his book Knowledge of the Holy

“Love, for instance, is not something God has and which may grow or diminish or cease to be. His love is the way God is, and when He loves He is simply being Himself.”

I’m so blessed by that…so thankful that God loves me regardless of me or my circumstances or my fears or my challenges or my difficulties or my emotions or my failures…God loves me because He made me to love.

There is hope for me in that…there is hope that even when everything seems completely out of sorts and daily life must continue on, I can trust that God has it because He loves me. I can trust that I am secure in His unfailing love.

Even when life shatters, God’s love keeps me together.

SHARING SOME THOUGHTS ON ROMANCE

/ Sue Birdseye / 1 Comment

SHARING SOME THOUGHTS ON ROMANCE

I’ve been learning a lot about love lately.  Loving my children well.  Loving my friends well.  Loving my family well.  Loving my Lord the best.  And especially how the Lord loves me.

When I was looking up verses on love, it was amazing how many times God uses the word steadfast to describe His love for us. 
 
The word steadfast means “fixed in direction, steadily directed, firm in purpose, resolution, faith, attachment, unwavering, firmly established, firmly fixed in place or position.”
 
What was the synonym that grabbed you the most?  For me it was unwavering, but resolution came in a close second.  Unwavering is a beautiful word because to me that says that no matter what God loves me.  I imagine it like a tree standing in the midst of a hurricane and defying the wind and the storm simply by standing upright.  God’s love is not impacted by what I do or say or think, or anything I have done, said or think or anything in the future.  That is beautiful to me.  That word resolution reminds me that God has decided to love me steadfastly regardless of me.  He is resolved that I should be loved by Him.  His love is steadily directed at me.  There is never a time when He withholds His love from me. Wow!  No matter what, He loves me.  No matter what, He loves you.
 
Read Psalm 136 and see how much God wants you to truly understand how steadfastly He loves you.  I have included part of it…He says it 26 times – once in each verse!  He wants us to know His love is unwavering, unending. 
 
Dearest, He loves you relentlessly!
 
I pray that today you will grasp how deeply and steadily God loves you.
 
Psalm 136

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.

Give thanks to the God of gods, for his steadfast love endures forever.

Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his steadfast love endures forever.

To him who alone does great wonders, for his steadfast love endures forever.

To him who by understanding made the heavens, for his steadfast love endures forever;

To him who spread out the earth above the waters, for his steadfast love endures forever; to him who made the great lights, for his steadfast love endures forever; the sun to rule over the day, for his steadfast love endures forever; the moon and the stars to rule over the night, for his steadfast love endures forever;…