Love, off the record

The world won't bend enough

For you to see that love

Is worth all the trouble . . .

So sings Leigh Nash in the song "Blue." I wrote those lyrics on the wall weeks ago (not directly, I wasn't vandalizing, don't worry) because the song was running through my head, the lyrics seeming perfect for things that I was thinking about.

It only hit me today that the one who really needed to hear that, the one who really needed to change some things, was me. I was the one, despite all my talk about how important it is to live in love, who had a subconscious list in my head of things love wasn't worth. I'd like to negate it now, in writing.

Love is worth waiting patiently and peacefully for God's plans in my life to come to pass, without being angry with Him or other people about what hasn't happened yet, and without being jealous of people who seem to be "ahead" of me.

Love is worth trust. Love is worth being vulnerable to hurt and disappointment. Love is worth being humble enough to let other people's actions have an effect on my feelings, humble enough to let them see that effect (when appropriate).

Love is worth laying down pride and selfishness by loving someone even if I don't know how they'll respond, even if I don't think I'm going to get anything back.

Love is worth taking the harder path when the easier is so obvious. Love is worth being honest with someone when I think they're going down the wrong path. Love is worth biting my tongue when I want to say something that would not be for the edification of the moment, that would not be true and loving.

Love is worth leaving my baggage behind and not judging every new thing by that one thing in my past that went badly. Love is worth believing the best about other people that I can.

If I love God, then I should trust Him. If I love Him, I should obey Him. If I obey Him, it means loving other people. If I trust Him, it means I can put loving other people over protecting and defending myself. If I realize that He loves me, I can be secure enough in that not to be so insecure about how people see me that it clouds my judgment.

Love, Strictly Speaking

One night a few weeks ago, a friend and I were talking about what our mission in life was, trying to reduce it to a simple phrase of two or three words. The only thing I could think of seemed to me incredibly vague, but neither my friend nor another person or two I talked to about it thought so. Perhaps I only think it's too vague because I, as do most human beings, am committing the error of supposing that other human beings think about things the way I do. Perhaps the phrase I thought of is actually a good definition of my life's mission:

Spread love!

However, the only way I can say in good conscience that that statement is not vague is to define it further. Before I try to define love, though, I want to make my argument for why everything that everyone--especially every one of those who say they are Christians--does should be done in love.

Why do I say that? I say that because, as the song "Jesus Loves Me" states, "the Bible tells me so." 1 Corinthians 16:14 reads, "Let all that you do be done in love." Galatians 5:13-14 says that we "were called to freedom . . . only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" And 1 John 4:7-8 tells us "let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love." As if all the verses in the Epistles were not enough, in the Gospels (Matthew 22:34-40, Mark 12:28-31) we find Jesus Himself clearly stating that the greatest commandment and second greatest commandment are those which say that we should love God and love our neighbor.

As a disclaimer, I'm not trying to say that everyone should think their main mission in life is to spread love. I just want to make the point that, regardless of whether you would want to encapsulate your whole life into a phrase that uses the word love, the idea of love is central to the Christian life.

The question remains, what exactly is love? The question is more confusing than it might sound. For my attempt at an extended definition of love, I'm not going to go to a dictionary, and I'm not going to talk about feelings (not that feelings aren't great, but if I'm talking about my life's mission, I want a practical set of guidelines of what this means I should be doing). And yes, I know it's been used a gazillion times before, but I'm going to go to 1 Corinthians 13. Sometimes there's a reason that the same passage gets quoted over and over again on a certain subject.

Here's a list of things that love is described as being and doing: patient, kind, not jealous, not bragging or arrogant, not acting unbecomingly, not seeking its own, not provoked, not taking into account wrongs suffered, not rejoicing in unrighteousness but rejoicing in the truth, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things.

Here are my personal reactions to a few of these (maybe in another post I'll go into more). Patient? Oh, my, I fail at that one. Not in the sense of waiting an afternoon or a day or a week to hear back from someone or go somewhere or get something. But if you want me to wait indefinitely on something I really really want? Ouch. Not jealous? OK, I'm getting better on that one than I used to be. But show me someone, especially someone close to me, who already has something that I hope to have someday (or want but don't know if I'll ever have) and I will show you at least some level of jealousy going on inside of me. Not seeking its own or taking into account wrongs suffered? Hmm. That sounds superhuman. Or at least countercultural. Bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things . . . I don't even know how to start applying those. It sounds like the characterization of a very patient and persevering person. Someone determined to see the best in everyone and encourage it. Someone who's willing to put up with a lot.

Getting discouraged? So am I. Therefore, I'll close with a mention of Someone else's love for us:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38-39

PS Obviously, this is by no means exhaustive, even of what I personally could say on the subject of love. I hope to write more later.

Nocturne

Night has always seemed to me an excellent time for reflection, for quietness, for solitude. I've always been fascinated by the feeling of night. I used to lie awake in bed when I ought to have been sleeping, with a very still body and a very active brain. Imagining out stories, music, poetry, etc. I suppose you could say I thought it was a good time to be creative!

As I got older and the more unpleasant parts of life became more of a reality to me--and as I turned into a moody teenager--the night changed, or rather my relationship to it. Lying awake at night became something quite different; staring at the moonlight on my wall, trying to face or forget or accept what I could neither change nor control, quietly overwhelmed by things that were too much for me, or at least too much to let me sleep normally during those nights.

By the grace of God, that phase did not last forever. And, as I've gotten older still, while night has kept its capacity for beauty and creativity without relinquishing its ability to sometimes be the time when thoughts that I keep at bay during the day come to the surface against my will, I have discovered that it has yet a third face in my life as a time to be social, either in late-night girl-talks or in hanging out with a larger group for fun.

However, I still think that primarily night is for memories, reflections, and quiet indulgences in feelings that don't need to be spoken aloud. Oddly, it was not a night but a memory of a night that sparked the desire to write about night--one night over the summer, walking around a city after dark with a friend while she took pictures, we talked, and the atmosphere was one of goodbyes. It was a beautiful night, one of many memories from a summer that I hope to remember forever.

Brokenness

For a long time, Psalm 42 has been my favorite psalm. In a way, this seems odd, because there are definitely parts of it that have yet to apply to my own actual life experience. The odd part is that I'm pretty sure more of it applies than did when I first decided it was my favorite. Oh wait! I just realized that more applies than I thought! While I was writing this . . . I'm not kidding.

I don't necessarily want to get into details about why I love different parts of it or what they mean to me in my life. I think that the main point of why the psalm is so important to me is . . . well, we all have negative feelings, right? Sadness, bad moods, days we got out of bed on the wrong side, a day somebody broke up with you, a day you got bad news, a time of your life when it seems like things are ganging up on you, trying to get you to do nothing but sit around and think about all the worst things that have ever happened to you.

In other words, bad feelings happen. Nobody's happy all time. The question remains, what do you do when you're down in the dumps? Do you deny it and pretend, stuffing it all inside you to deal with later? Do you sit around and mope? Or do you ask yourself the vital question:

"Why are you in despair, O my soul?"

Which is followed by the best advice ever: "Hope in God"

The person speaking in this psalm is not pretending that everything is puppies and sunshine and he hasn't got a care in the world. He's also not giving up. He's pouring out his soul to God, reminding himself of God's goodness and faithfulness, and he's reminding himsef of something very important that I still forget as many times as I have read the verses: the thing he's really hungry and thirsty and longing and empty for is God and God alone.

A break from our (ir)regularly scheduled prose . . . *

I try so hard to find the words to say
What's on my heart, so You can make it new.
I'm trying every day to find a way
To force myself to be as good as You.

Perfection is the goal, or so I feel
And that's where I am failing every day;
If this is me, why would You put Your seal?
If You can use me, I don't see the way.

The comfort in Your Word is very clear;
Your love is strong and will not leave my side
Your Son's death bought me freedom from all fear
And to my sin and shame I'm told I've died.

And yet I see the struggle still is there;
I won't be perfect on this side of life
And I will always wish that things were fair
And that our hearts could be quite free from strife.

*see Romans chapters 6-8

Giving Up

Have you ever completely given up on someone or something? Have you ever wanted to?

I know I have often wanted to give up--on myself. Sometimes I think my life is too much and too hard for me, and I want to just cop out of everything and, I don't know, go curl up alone in a hole for the rest of my life? (I've never been completely clear what it is I would do.) But I never have. However, I don't take any credit for that fact. In those times when I have really truly wanted to give up, it has been something from within me that is *not* just me (the Holy Spirit?) that has popped up and said, "No, you are not going to sit there curled up in a ball crying forever. You are going to get up and keep trying." I've fought it, but it's there, and it won't let me give up.

I think that God has been incredibly patient with me. No matter how many times I get melodramatically pessimistic, no matter how many times I have entirely the wrong attitude, He sticks around. And when there's something He's trying to tell me? Does He tell me once or twice and then leave me alone? No. He keeps telling me until I finally listen. He keeps teaching me the same lesson over and over, and I'm the one who gets frustrated about the fact that it seems to take me about eighty thousand repetitions of the same lesson to actually learn it.

One thing I realized just this morning is that one of my fears is that God will one day say, "Oh, she'll never get it, why am I wasting My time?" and walk away. I'm afraid of this because I'm foolish enough to think that God might be like me. It's perfectly obvious to me that in His place, I would eventually give up and walk away.

Thank you, God, for not being like me. That is what makes You so worthy of all my praise and worship, all my life, all my heart, all my thoughts. I'm sorry that I fall so short so often of giving You all that I am.

Change

Weird is the new normal
Terrible is the new good
Crazy is the new sane

I have always hated change. If something is different, if I am going to do something I have never done before, if I am leaving what I consider to be my normal zone of existence in either time, place, or people, I am sure that that means something terrible is happening. I've heard it said that change is the only constant, and it has often seemed that, for me, that was going to translate into "fear is the only constant". Not surprisingly, I have never thought that constant fear sounded like a good way to live. I only thought I might be stuck with it.

Now, there is nothing in the Bible that instructs us to live in fear. The Bible says of fear that "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7)and that "perfect love casts out fear . . . and the one who fears is not perfected in love" (1 John 4:18). Nor does the picture given in the Bible of what God wants for our lives leave room for fearfulness. Jesus says of His sheep, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10), and He also says (in a passage where He is giving instructions on abiding in Him, in His Word, and in His love) "These things I have spoken to you that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full" (John 15:11). I don't know about you, but I don't find living abundantly and having my joy made full to be compatible with living in fear.

But, I think to myself, to *not* be afraid would be a big change. And I don't like change. So, right now, I'm in a really good place: laying down new and better patterns, having more confidence and less shyness, just generally being a lot happier with my life the way it is. And that's great. But it's so different that I find it downright disconcerting. That's why I'm writing this--to remind myself that change can actually be good--to show myself that a more joyful and abundant life *is* God's will for me and not some wacky innovation of my own.

Therefore, I can feel free to enjoy it, and to trust God that it will not be merely a phase.

PS: a note on the three lines at the top. It is an expression of how disoriented I feel. My new normal is quite different from the old one; I am enjoying things that I used to be afraid of; I am living in a way that is more intense and "out there" than usual. Here's hoping it lasts!