love stories: the purse - part III

Before reading this post, you may want to read Love Stories: The Purse - Part I and Love Stories: The Purse - Part II. For Emily.


Why do I have to be something for them? Can't they just love me where I am? Didn't Jesus die for me when I was yet a sinner?

The tears welled up, spilled over, ran hot frustration, soul-seared anguish down my cheeks.

I didn't intend to write more about The Purse. But it seems God wasn't - isn't - finished telling me that love story yet.

Sunday's drive took us past our grocery stop, past the beach, past the church we've begun to visit. It took us into conversation, a sharing about love and cherish and how much he wants me to feel treasured and how I don't because I wall me off and try not to think about love most of the time, even though I think about it all the time.

We talked of love, of need, of our high-need baby who demands of me all the time and of our baby who opens his heart up to me so that I can't help but respond.

And we began to talk about God and His love, and burning questions met cool air and thoughts I'd not encountered about behavior and how it affects others and how easy it is for us to fall into behavior-oriented expectation and leave real love so far behind in the dailiness of our survival.


God isn't a Purse for meeting needs. He is a Person.

He is Love.

Love requires nothing of her, nothing of me. But Love hopes everything for us. Bears everything from us. Believes all things are possible - even the redemption of our souls. Love hoped and believed and bore so much it sent Him to a Cross to die and live again to take the weight of our condemnation. Love lived our life, knew our desperation, grasped our need, died our death once for all.

His Person met our person. This is love, relationship, face to face, hand to hand, heart to heart, a person meeting a person - where they are.


When I carried The Purse around with me, I felt strong enough. My need to be needed opened small doors into the lives of others as I parceled out anything I could give. I didn't need to be broken. I didn't need to be fixed. I was the fixer. The Purse was my performance. The "love" I gave wasn't love at all.

As The Purse became too much to carry and I couldn't meet the needs I saw, I reached for justifications. No one was meeting my needs the way I would have met theirs. Didn't they see how empty I was? I grew heavy with bitter, reacted against everything they said about love, walled myself silent, learned to say "no" because it was healthier for me.

I slow-broke into heart-realms only Love could see behind the prickles and thorns and lashing-out.

"For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

- Rom. 5:6-8

It was in the tears He met me. In the screaming, weeping real of me, He made His love known to me, love that reached into my dust and my bitter and taught me to move again, however stiffly.

I have begun to learn that giving isn't meant to be a burden I carry, that love isn't about the shoulds or the needs or the obligation. The love I was giving before was all about that. I hated love then. I didn't want it from anyone else.

But God - His Love frees. It justifies freely, forgives quickly, without reproach. It opens doors and opens hearts to the becoming-one that Jesus prayed in John 17.

I am coming to see that love is intentional. It must be, or it could not bear, believe, hope, endure all things. It is not an "I give you this, so you will give me that in return" (did I really live in that expectation? forgive me, you who knew!). Love says, "If you never change to be what I want you to be, still I have given to you."

Jesus died for the whole world. God so loved the whole world that He sent Him.

The work of God is to believe Him, and Jesus Christ who He sent. A Spirit-work accomplished in grace, faith that is the gift of God.

His work is not need-meeting.

My work is not need-meeting.

It is loving as He first loved me.

Oh, that I might know the fullness of His love...


(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

love stories: the purse - part II

These stories-in-parts challenge me. I leave my thought half-written for a week or two, and mentally continue to write and think through the topic. I can't dismiss it, and the waiting-on-the-writing grows me. Before you read this post, you may want to read Love Stories: The Purse - Part I. I'll be picking up from there.


Need-meeting isn't always love. And it is love that fills us up, that nourishes relationship, that changes a life.

There is a breaking that happens when you love. A shattered vessel, a broken heart, glory poured out into dust, soaked up, spread around.

Love is not need begging need. It is not a well-stocked Purse designed to secure fulfillment - for self or for others. Love is a giving that expects no return and wildly hopes for a response.

Love is not being God to others.

We love because He first loved us. When we do love, really love, we love others as He loved us. It has something to do with falling into His love, with being full up with Him who is Love.

A purse can be dropped, emptied. There is no end to Him.

how does He love me?

Piper is two and a half now. Almost three.

If you have had children, you know what this means. If you have had an independent, spunky, first-born child, you know what this means.

She has a mind of her own - and it runs contrary to everything in my mind. There is a certain measure of predictability in her reactions: she throws a fit over everything. Even the love I try to offer.

The rejection of my love - even from a two-year-old - hits me deep. Really, really deep. Every time Piper pitches a fit at me, I shut down a little more. I grow harder. I push her away.

I respond out of fear and anger. So much anger. I want to train her like a dog sometimes, pick her up, rub her nose in what she has done, over and over, because that is the way it washes over me, the things that can't be fixed.

I don't want to give her grace. And mercy? She still needs consequences.

Because God is a God of judgment. And by the law came the knowledge of sin. And all the sorries in the world don't make things better.

And I HATE THAT I THINK THAT.

But I think it about me too.

love stories: the purse - part I

I was never one for the popular crowd. Or rather, they never thought they were one for me. I was always a bit on the outside - well, quite on the outside. It is odd to me to hear that I am pretty, that I say things that are worth hearing, that people would like to meet me, that they would like to spend time with me.

I do not think of myself this way.

...

I was a dork when I was growing up. I talked too much, laughed too loud, stood too strong. I did not wear the "right" kind of clothes, either. It took me a while to grow up into myself. It's not so bad now.

But then, I compensated.

I would do almost anything for the approval of people, particularly the people who insisted on rejecting me. I was terribly good at compliments. They didn't seem to make much difference, though. Nobody seemed interested in conversation - in fact, I still don't know what I didn't do to earn their friendship.

Still, I needed to find something to win friends.

...

By sixth grade, I had picked up on the fact that it is human nature to respond when someone offers something we need. I decided that I would be the one to have it, and The Purse Idea was born.

I packed tissues, highlighters, pens, pencils, gum, paper, journals, erasers, makeup remover, spare change, Chapstick, you-name-it into granny-size purses for years. Just so that I could have whatever someone needed when they needed it. As I became more style-conscious, I downsized my purse, but The Purse mentality carried over into my life.

It meant that I would go the extra mile to serve in church. I'd sing if there was no one else to do it. I'd play the piano - weddings, funerals, church services - unpaid. I'd babysit for free, every time. People took advantage of me; I didn't mind. I felt loved if they asked my help again.

But when I started collapsing during my freshman year of college, I dropped The Purse. I couldn't carry it anymore. It was too heavy for me. Others stepped in to meet needs that I couldn't meet.

...

My weakness only made me more determined. I learned to take pictures. I shot weddings for practically nothing. I wrote when asked, said "yes" to everything, volunteered whenever there was an opportunity to help. I was winning friends and influencing people.

I was restocking The Purse.

But I wasn't building relationship, and the people I helped weren't seeking it.

So I was left alone.

...

Having children has emptied my purse. I barely remember to pack a diaper bag when I leave the house, let alone make considerations for the masses of people around me who will have needs.

But need-meeting isn't always love. And it is love that fills us up, that nourishes relationship, that changes a life. I am only beginning to understand that. My two have a lot of needs. Some I can meet; some I can't begin to fathom.

The Purse I carried was really my way of trying to be God to others in my life. The love I thought I was offering wasn't love at all.

...

To be continued, next Thursday.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Love Stories: God and Me, Part V

For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

- Romans 5:6-8

God never had to prove His love to me. When you are Love itself, I suppose simple existence is enough. I Am, He calls Himself to Moses. Even I can't explain the depth of who I am.

Some things you just have to know.

...

I was in the dark again.

This time it was postpartum depression. It was financial stress. It was months of processing backlog. It was Pete not passing the Bar.

It was me trying to live without God.

My prayers were falling flat. I tamped down my desire. I grabbed hold of every gift I'd been given, refusing to open my hands and my heart to Him. To give Him place in my life to say "no."

To my understanding, there was nothing different about living my life with God than there was living without Him. Nothing except dashed hopes and expectations I couldn't meet.

There were things I didn't say then to anyone, but in my heart, I was building my case against God. I felt betrayed. Brokenhearted. I wanted to pay Him back.

...

Pete had retaken the Bar in February, 2008. Our financial limitations had driven us two houses from the home I loved, the home where we spent our wedding night, the home where I had my first baby.

I couldn't settle anywhere. I pushed Pete and Piper away from my heart, weeping silent in quiet dark hours, knowing God made no guarantees, knowing that I had lost deep once - nothing would stop me from losing again. I couldn't love and lose again.

My health had taken another turn downhill. The lack of sleep after Piper's birth (she didn't sleep through the night for two years) was too much for my system, and my depression cycled downward with the return of the collapsing and convulsions.

His whispers were the familiar broken record "I love you."

Yeah right, God. Sure You do.

...

Pete passed the Bar, and his office hired his replacement under him. He was working as a floating assistant for several different attorneys - too much work for too little money. We were looking for jobs in California; nothing was coming. I ate the stress, retreated deeper into my shell.

Our house didn't have any light. I hated it. I hated me there. I hated everything.

I refused to pray.

A job opportunity opened up in Charleston. He pursued it. Interviewed via phone the day after he'd queried back. Flew down for an interview a couple of days later. By the end of the week, he had an offer.

And it was too low for us to accept.

...

I was trapped.

When Pete called me to tell me the offer was too low, I clawed at the strictures of my life. I hung up on Pete when he tried to talk to me about God after telling me the news. I remember screaming into the woods around our house, looking into the trees and asking God where He was, if He bothered to care about me.

I remembered His "I love you."

Love?

No, He was God. He was going to do what He was going to do. He wanted me to lay down my life for Him, and guaranteed nothing in return. Nothing but Himself. I wanted to spit on His offer. Why would I want Him?

I told Pete that I was done with God. I couldn't un-believe His existence; it was the only thing that made sense. But I was as close as I had ever been to hating Him. I didn't want to have anything to do with Him. I didn't want Him to use me anymore. I felt manipulated and betrayed and... dead.

God didn't care about me. And if He did, I didn't want it.

He was nothing more than a concept to me. A concept I was supposed to believe. A concept that was supposed to change my life.

...

A day later, Pete was given a second job offer. We were moving, in a week's time. Our landlord flipped out. The landlord who had been okay with our five-times-telling-him that Pete was between jobs and we might need to break our lease. The landlord I'd respected and liked. The landlord I'd hand-picked to stop the freak-out from happening.

I succumbed to the shock and anger that day.

I screamed at God. Screamed and screamed and screamed. The events of the last several years, the bottled anger, the disappointment, the sense of betrayal, the obligation I had felt to be godly, my constant sense of shame, the repeated "I love you" in the face of my fear of loss - I threw it all up at Him with all the passion I possessed. I shook my fist at Him from my knees. I shook both fists.

And I curled into a ball and wept.

It was like a defibrillator. My deadened heart was shocked back into life and everything I had shut down and pushed poured out into real again. I dumped all that I had been holding against Him out that day. My case was big enough to convict Him of not loving me now.

...

Pouring my heart out before the Lord left me empty. Clean. My accusations had been flung at Him. My anger had finally been spent. Giving voice to my complaint against Him had freed me from it.

The next day in the car, I quietly tried to apologize to Him for my anger, embarrassed over my loss of control.

He surprised me with His response. "You were in pain."

All that anger, and that was what He got?

It was like He hadn't been listening. It was as if He hadn't heard. It was as if He had been with me in it all along, aching with me, dying with me, waiting for me to bring it into His love.

...

I had nothing left to hold against God. I spent the next months waiting, quiet, learning my dust, learning His Godness.

We moved to Charleston; I didn't like the house we moved to, but there was light here. The depression wasn't so bad as it had been. I began to give shy thanks for His provision.

Pete was home more than he had been. His commute was ten minutes long instead of forty. We got a chance to be a family, to get to know one another again.

I didn't say much about God. I listened. I filled my time with pictures; a Flickr addiction came and went; I learned what exactly it meant that Jesus had died for me.

...

It was morning. I can't tell you the date. I can just tell you the way the morning sun came through the window at the house I didn't much like. I had my camera, but I didn't photograph it.

It came deep, still, like a breath into the core of my soul.

God loves me.

You know how they always say that when you fall in love with someone, you "just know" you were meant for each other? I always hated that. I always wanted the explanation, the how, the why.

But it's true. The deepest love can't be defined, because God Himself is Love, because He is infinite, because He has no beginning and no end, because He is Beginning and End.

God loves me.

I just knew.

...

Once upon a time, in a time before time, a perfect, holy God loved me. Before I existed, before I knew I needed Him, He made a way for me to know His love.

I ask Piper when we go to sleep together if she knows who loves her. She gives her answer: "God loves you, and Jesus loves you, and Mama loves you, and Daddy loves you, and Uncle Kate loves you and Mickey Mouse loves you..."

He sent His Son Jesus, God-in-flesh, to be broken for me, to wear my dust, to be my sin so that I could wear His righteousness and approach Him in His holiness to obtain mercy.

I ask Piper if she knows how we know God loves her. She doesn't yet, but I tell her: "Jesus died for you." She doesn't know what that means yet.

This great God who loved me sealed my heart with His Spirit for the day that Jesus will come for me, to bring me finally into His presence to be one with Him.

I wonder what Piper's love story will be; how will God teach her heart His love for her? I can't wish my story on her; I can't wish away His love.

Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.”

And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son

- Revelation 21:1-7

And they will live happily ever after.

...

Love Stories: God and Me, Part I
Love Stories: God and Me, Part II
Love Stories: God and Me, Part III
Love Stories: God and Me, Part IV

...

On Thursdays in February (because I never know quite what to post on Thursdays), I was writing out my love story. Not the one about my crushes or my first love or even my love for Pete - though those stories all play a part. Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista and Holley Gerth at (in)Courage challenged us to write out our God love stories, and I had one to share.

This is my last official installment on this particular series. More love stories to come, though, as inspiration hits... Thanks for sticking with me.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Love Stories: God and Me, Part IV

There was still the matter of the vow.

I hadn't made it lightly. And I had made it to God - a God of whose love I was no longer certain.

The months after the hospital passed under a cover of grace, grace I recognize in the looking back, seeing now the fear that stalked me then.

Pete's and my friendship deepened; I sought God with him, co-teaching a Sunday School class for the teens at our church. My pursuit of Him was rote, something I knew to do, something I'd always done.

I tried not to think about my friend, about the outstanding question of his return to me. I tried not to hope - for his return, for the return of my health, for anything at all. After several years of unresolved health issues I knew this: God was sovereign, and He would do what He wanted, regardless of my desire.

...

God told Pete to ask Him for me.

Not in the "ask Me so that I have the place to tell you no" sense. In the "ask Me for a sign and I will give it to you" sense.

So Pete obeyed and asked and fell in love with me.

I was not in love with him. But I knew I was no longer in love with my friend either. That wasn't something I shared with anyone. Not even with God. The inside jokes I'd shared with Him earlier in my story were over, the ready trust, the easy surrender, the passion behind my vow, the vow that kept me from returning Pete's love. The vow that depended on God's work in the heart of my friend.

Work that wasn't happening.

...

Christmas came. Questions about our friendship had arisen for both Pete and me. His family didn't know what to do with our relationship. They counseled him strongly against it; he shared his heart with his dad. His dad prayed.

My parents couldn't understand why I was still holding out for my friend's return. I explained the vow I had to keep. I told Dad that I'd shared the vow with him, that he hadn't said anything, that because of it, I was bound to it, for the sake of keeping the vow to the Lord.

My dad stared. "I never heard you. And if I had, there is no way I would have said you should keep it."

Humbling words. Frightening words. Freeing words.

...

I spent the New Year at a bed and breakfast retreat Pete had given me for Christmas. I intended to pull out my Bible and repeat the last year's New Year retreat - Genesis through Job seeking and discovering God. Pete figured if I found Him, he'd never see me again.

My heart wasn't in it. After my dad's words to me releasing me from my vow, I couldn't open my Bible. I was scared to find myself that alone with God. But He was pursuing me. He was so close, I felt if I turned and looked, I would see Him.

I ran.

I rented a movie. Hit two rental places looking for a VCR on which to watch the movie. The one in my room was broken. I bought one.

I didn't make it back to the bed and breakfast to hook the thing up and turn on the movie before He caught me in the dark of my car, so present, so real I couldn't escape Him.

"What do you want?" I remember asking Him, a little annoyed, a little afraid, gutsy enough to be the one to speak first, take the bull by the horns.

He didn't say anything. Not yet. I could feel Him looking at me, the pointed kind of look that says, "are you actually serious, asking Me that? You know."

I tried leaving Him in the car. Went inside. Set up the VCR. Put the movie in.

Turned it off.

"What do you want?"

It was Him this time, asking me.

...

Pete and I were married in October, 2005.

I had been freed from my first vow to make a new one, but I'd not been freed from my fear. I clutched Pete almost wildly to myself, waiting for the ball to drop, waiting for the inevitable loss that I was sure must come if I loved anything or anyone too much.

God wanted all of me. After I'd admitted my love for Pete to Him, I dived for cover, and He let me go, for a time. Let me live. During my first year of marriage, He spoke still and small His "I love you," over and over and over.

I acknowledged. "Yeah, God. I know."

"I love you."

...

Piper was born in July, 2007. A year of "I love you" culminated in faith to cling to Him during her birth.

I was ready to move on with life. I figured it was time to start growing spiritually again. Trying to find God again. Trying to love Him again. Which meant laying down my life for Him. And figuring out what it meant to lay down my life. I wanted to get to the "life abundant" on the other side of that "nevertheless."

Somehow, I thought I might be able to manage it without letting Him into my heart again. Without being so vulnerable as I had been. Without facing the fear that held me captive.

Somehow I thought I could lay down my life for Him without Him.

...

Love Stories: God and Me, Part I
Love Stories: God and Me, Part II
Love Stories: God and Me, Part III


...

On Thursdays in February (because I never know quite what to post on Thursdays), I was writing out my love story. Not the one about my crushes or my first love or even my love for Pete - though those stories all play a part. Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista and Holley Gerth at (in)Courage challenged us to write out our God love stories, and I had one to share.

It's been on hold for a couple of weeks, and here we are in March with what should have been the final post - but I discovered this morning that it won't be the final post. There is too much more that I cannot share today.

Thanks for your patience. More to come next Thursday.






(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Love Stories: God and Me, Part III

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life."

- Proverbs 13:12

I am told I met my Pete in February, 2004.

A coworker wanted me to go on a blind date with an online schoolmate of hers who was coming to town. There was no way I was going to subject myself to that. Not with everything that had already happened relating to boys and dates and the rest of my life spent waiting, because at the rate he was going, my friend was never getting married, and he sure wasn't coming back.

He told me so. I got the "never" to my face. And I was told not to expect God to change his mind.

I vaguely remember one day in the midst of the dark when I walked into the dining hall at the campus where I still worked after dropping out of school. I had a question for my coworker; really, I was looking for an excuse to be there. I knew I wasn't wanted by anyone in the room.

I asked my question; my coworker answered my question. I can remember a shadow behind her, someone moving quiet out of the light. I heard a familiar laugh across the room, too loud, too painful. I left as quickly as I could.

...

Pete told me much later that he went home to Connecticut and couldn't get me out of his mind. He said he'd never seen someone in so much pain. He said he'd prayed for me. I still say if I'd met him then, I'd never have fallen in love with him.

...

The spring came and went that year with me watching a calendar with silly hope. Each month had a focus on something beautiful, and for the life of me I can't tell you now what the themes of the months were, except June. I know what June was.

It was love.

Every month before, something had happened to fulfill the monthly theme. I was on a high with God, giddy that He cared to involve Himself in my life, giddy that anything could happen, that He could bring my friend back in spite of everything. He had told me to love him, after all.

There was only one thing that could happen in June that could meet the requirements of my love theme.

During the last week in June, I completely collapsed at the office with convulsions that sent me into the hospital. In the ER, I was given an IV containing what I was told was the same fluids that were in my body. I didn't realize it carried 5% dextrose into my bloodstream. I didn't realize it was going to make me weaker because of my sensitivity to sugar.

The first few days saw me accepting my suffering with hope. I read my Bible. I thanked God for the window in my room. I had landed in the old maternity ward. It was a safe place. I felt surrounded by love. I knew I was where God wanted me.

I had visitors, and the nurses were kind. They woke me every morning to draw blood, testing for God-knows-what. The person who got my room after I was moved was rather annoyed by all the callers for me.

Oh yes. I was moved.

And that is where the nightmare began.

...

I had known Pete for about a month at that point, but the month had opened such a friendship between us that I risked a call to him from the ER. I didn't know who else to call. I was still a kid in so many ways. I think it takes growing up to recognize how much you need your parents still, and too often, they're gone before you realize it.

He came. Every day except the three that he was gone on conference.

It was on one of those days that the hospital staff moved me. The nursing staff came in wearing masks at about 11:00 p.m. of the third day of what would be my nine-day stay. They were testing for something highly contagious, they said. I was being moved to isolation.

I was terrified. My sister had gone home that night, something she wouldn't do again for the rest of my stay.

Knowing he would still be up studying, I called Pete from my new room and talked until we were both too tired to stay awake. The room with a window that looked into a wall. The room on the hall where everyone was throwing up. I could hear them through the walls. It was in this room that I met Fear. It was in this room that he seared my soul with a perspective change that would forever challenge my childish view of God.

...

During my time at the hospital, I had been praying, begging God, really, to send my friend to see me. I asked Pete to ask him to come. I thought he might take it better from him than from me.

I wanted to ask his forgiveness. For what, I don't know. Loving him against his will? I still don't really know. I just wanted my friend back. At that point, I didn't care whether I "ended up" with him or not.

Every day I battled within myself over whether I should ask God for him to come. I expected him around every corner, waited for him to appear in my room - always looking, always waiting.

As I grew weaker and weaker with the dextrose in the IV compromising my blood, I began to wonder if I'd ever see him again. Finally one night, I fell to my knees, surrounded by fear, surrounded by the awful sounds of retching, by the weeping and the eerie hospital-quiet, and I begged. I begged God to send him. I turned my hands upward and surrendered my desire to God, for a final yes or no.

Pete found me beside the bed that night, too weak to climb back in. He helped me up and tucked me in as I faded into oblivion.

The last thing I remember from that night is his tender kiss on my forehead.

...

To my knowledge, my friend never came to the hospital. It was the closing of a door I didn't understand then, the opening of heart-questions for me that that simultaneously pulled me to God and drove me from Him.

How could He love me? What proof did I have that God really cared about me? What proof would I ever have?

In the weeks after the hospital, I cried through Job. I begged my friends for answers about God's love, about what it looked like, about what He meant. Pete stood firm that God loved me, that He didn't have to prove His love.

But how could I believe that?

...

I left the hospital with Fear, who would become my constant companion. Before I left, God had asked me to speak the name of Jesus to one of my doctors. I did. Before I left, one of my nurses came to me and told me that she was a Christian, that my witness had challenged her to live more loudly for Christ there in the hospital.

Before I left, the doctor told me I still had no diagnosis.

I left the hospital angry with God. How could He? How could He use me like that and leave me weaker, broken, without answers, without love?

The anger frightened me. As the days passed, I slowly shoved it away, behind the safer "Praise God, I'm out of the hospital. I'm in a wheelchair again, but it's okay. I'm not there anymore. My friend didn't come, but God is still bigger." The habits were there already. The patterns were set. I could act God, if I had to. And I had to, because nothing else made sense to me. "God" was all I had ever known.

I didn't know what else to do.

It would be years before the anger would surface again. It would be years before I faced those doubts and asked those questions, years before I opened my heart again.

It would be years before I faced God again.

I canned the calendar.

...

Love Stories: God and Me, Part I
Love Stories: God and Me, Part II

...

On Thursdays this month (because I never know quite what to post on Thursdays), I am writing out my love story. Not the one about my crushes or my first love or even my love for Pete - though those stories all play a part. Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista and Holley Gerth at (in)Courage challenged us to write out our God love stories, and I had one to share. BOY, do I have one to share.

So I know it's a little canned, being the "love month" and all, but I thought I'd take some time to write it out anyway. It's good for me to dwell on His love for me.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

All My Heart

There is a school of thought that says it is possible to love your husband more than you love God. It says it is possible to make an idol out of your husband. Logically speaking, this line of thought holds that it is actually possible to sin against God by loving your husband.

No way. I don't think so.

Eve's overwhelming desire for her husband may have been something God explained to her when He leveled the Curse against the snake and the ground, but He never said it was a sin to desire Adam.

He said Adam would rule over her.

In the head-of-the-house sort of way. In the Eve-you'll-submit sort of way. In the half-of-your-heart-walking-out-of-the-door-every-morning sort of way.

...

I'm guest-posting at Deidra's blog today. Head on over to Jumping Tandem to read just exactly what I wrote about this whole "loving your husband more than God" thing.

I'll give you a hint: I can't love him enough...





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Love Stories: God and Me, Part II

The journals.

They witnessed it all. They caught the tears, the dark-etched pencil (I never use pen for my handwriting), the play-by-play of my first love, my first deep heartbreak. I don't know now how many I filled.

...

As a teenager, I asked God to guard my heart for the man He had for me. I had as many (or more) crushes as the next girl, growing up. Maybe it was because we moved so often. There were plenty of new rooms with new faces for me to walk into and select which face to dream about. Dreaming about a Prince Charming is an occupational hazard for a teenage girl. At least it was for me.

During my first year at my second college, I got serious about God. More serious than I had been when I gave my life to Him for missionary work in the third grade. More serious than I had been when I rededicated my life for full-time Christian service at camp when I was eighteen. More serious about Him than I had been a full year at Bible college.

Wanna know why?

Because there were other people around me who were more serious about Him than I was. My competitive streak was up.

He'll use anything to draw us in.

But I was serious. So serious that September 12, 2001 saw me on my knees, finally giving my whole life to God for real, to do whatever, go wherever He would ask. At the time, I fancied New York City. A switch to a nursing career. Saving lives. Helping orphans. Even going to Africa. You know. The obvious ministry stuff. I was determined to want God more than I had wanted anything else, ever.

Two weeks later, I got my "whatever, wherever" from God when I started collapsing without explanation or diagnosis. There would be no glamorous occupation for me. Things were going to get messy.

...

Questions began to surface. The questions that come from suffering. The whys. The constant search for explanation. Little victories that I had performed well rejoicing in suffering crashed down as the suffering intensified. My circle of friends dwindled. They were tired of trying to answer my questions, I think. They were trying to survive their own Freshman year.

But there was one friendship in particular that would forever change my life. He was probably the fourth real guy friend I had ever had. And he was a good friend. A true friend. He was the first person I ever loved with God's love.

And my girl's heart fell in love with him. Hard.

He loved me too.

The logical end of the love that grew out of our friendship should have been a happily-ever-after.

I looked in the mirror one day after he left on a school trip, and I saw it there, the thing I'd read about but never quite believed. I was glowing. I looked in the mirror and I saw what he saw. I was sparkling. I was beautiful.

I never wanted to lose that feeling. I was amazed at the love God had given to me. Of course it had been Him. I had asked Him to guard my heart for the man He wanted for me. I simply assumed He had kept me for this one.

Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.

...

My second year at my second college was the loneliest year I have ever lived.

My friend who I loved, who loved me, rejected me out-of-hand. He ignored me. He "was over it now." He pursued my best girl friend.

His reasons were many and complicated, but I watched that year as he systematically destroyed every part of himself that reminded him of me. I felt as if he were deeply ashamed of me, of my feelings, of my love, of our friendship.

My heart shattered.

...

God asked me to love him anyway. He wanted me to speak to Him the truth that was in my heart about my feelings. He wanted me to love my friend as He loved him. He wanted me to see him as God saw me, to give him the same grace I was learning to receive myself.

My sister listened to numerous friends who questioned my choice to love, who questioned my motives and my confusion, but instead of counseling the end of it all, she encouraged me. It was the first time in the whole of our lives that she had seen me reach outside of my own self-centeredness to care for the heart of someone else.

And the love God placed in my heart for my friend was a lifeline that drew me through my pain and confusion into God's heart.

I learned that love doesn't always look like hearts and flowers and sparkling eyes and the honeymoon stage.

I learned how incredibly we can hurt God when we rebuff His offer of relationship.

I learned how deeply He could love someone. I learned how deeply He could love me.

I learned that love - real love - cannot be killed.

All these lessons I held to my heart, waiting until God would be finished teaching me what He wanted to teach me, waiting for Him to answer my prayer and bring my friend back to me, give me the love and the wedding I longed for.

I journaled and I journaled and I journaled, hoping that one day my friend would read the words that told the story of my walk with God through the pain, hoping that he would be able to see how much I'd loved him in spite of it all, praying that one day I would pick up a pencil and write on the page how amazing God had been to bring us together, finally.

I wanted to believe God would give me what I wanted. But I never could quite bring myself to it. Something inside could not be released.

...

God had told me to ask Him for my friend, so that He could say "no" to me if He wanted.

I really, really hoped He would say "yes" if I surrendered. I even made a vow to Him. My part of the bargain, if you will. Just so He'd know I was serious. I intended to keep it too.

I vowed that I would wait for my friend until he was married to someone else. I knew then what I'll admit now - I just didn't want to hurt him more than he'd already been hurt through his own choices. I hoped one day to offer him my love, full and free - no bitterness, no hard feelings.

Still, a vow was a vow, and keeping a vow made to the Lord was terribly important to me.

So I vowed. And I ached. Oh, I ached. And I waited.

I would still be waiting now, but for God.

I had learned much about His love, but I didn't know it. Not deep. Not yet. I needed to know Him.

...

NOTE: For some of you who read, this post will be quite a throwback to conversations and old places in my friendships with you. For some who didn't know, it may explain a bit why I was the way I was during this period of time in my life. Please bear with me. It is a part of my story I cannot erase. I have written as much from my own perspective as I can; I have shared here what I may not have shared with some of you. Thank you, real people who have walked with me, for being in my life on many sides of this.

...

Love Stories: God and Me, Part I

...

On Thursdays this month (because I never know quite what to post on Thursdays), I am writing out my love story. Not the one about my crushes or my first love or even my love for Pete - though those stories all play a part. Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista and Holley Gerth at (in)Courage challenged us to write out our God love stories, and I had one to share. BOY, do I have one to share.

So I know it's a little canned, being the "love month" and all, but I thought I'd take some time to write it out anyway. It's good for me to dwell on His love for me.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Love Today

Wednesday.

The week is blurred on both sides; it is only the moment that comes into focus, like a permanent shallow depth-of-field.

I hear the windchimes outside the house that will be ours for only a few more weeks. Already, we are moving stuff three streets over to our new/old/new house. Pete needs to put in the lighting there. We need more hours in a day.

But the windchimes are singing here today. Loudly. The wind that blew out the clouds overnight and brought the sun in this morning is determined and cold, frolicking as if spring is here, teasing.

I'm a little disoriented. Wistfully disoriented, I think. I feel a bit trapped inside my body today; I am annoyed with my physical limitations. The world is blurred. I am awkward. My legs don't work very well. Neither does my voice. I am weak today.

I've cleaned my inbox, quieted enough to string answers together and reply to a few letters. I don't sleep well in daylight so I haven't napped; I slept until 9:30 this morning, because Pete stayed home to help with the little ones. Now he is feeling ill, and the babies are sleeping.

Finally, I am alone with my thoughts.

...

Wednesday.

Ann Voskamp is hosting her "Walk With Him Wednesday." I have been thinking of how to love like Jesus, but all I can scribble here (is it scribbling to type the words, really?) is vivid memory-etching from Sunday's dim-lit worship, nameless faces, hearts indwelt by Christ.

He came to be me, came to be them, that we might all be washed in grace, clothed together in His righteous. I don't know them. I didn't have to know them. I didn't have to be hurt by them or forgive them to recognize Him in them.

The Motrin has eased the throat-pain now. I try not to be distracted by the fresh chill. I turn up the heat.

Ann has written of love during her family's sick time. I didn't know when I began this post. "One can't love too much," she says. But one can love too little. I am not good at this sort of love. Giving or receiving it. Both require stepping outside of oneself. And that is hard to do, when I am falling apart, body and mind.

But not soul. I can't remember the last time I felt well. I pull myself up, remember my mom's encouragement - "endurance," she has offered me many times. "Sometimes, you just have to get through it."

She is right. The living cannot just stop. Time goes on. Needs don't go away.

I wish for someone to bring a meal tonight. I think I can manage it, though, if I stand long enough. I need to get it before the baby wakes again to eat.

The loving can't stop for weakness.

It endures, doesn't it?

I remember the strep infection I got when Piper was four weeks old. I had a fever, 104 degrees. I was barely conscious, still waking to nurse her, burning hot flesh against my husband in bed, freezing too deep to get warm.

This is not so bad as it was then.

The sun is setting. Day is nearly finished. We'll be up for a few more hours with Bredon's colic now.

...

Wednesday.

Loving like Jesus. It must be done here, in the now - whether I am ready or not. This is how He loved. His eternal God-love met with flesh-limitation, and He sought rest too, bearing burdens, yielding His body to meet our desperate need, giving His life as He traveled with no place to lay His head.

It must be done in today, this loving like Him, leaving yesterday's failures there, taking no thought for tomorrow's grace not-yet-measured.

This love seems stronger than all the other times I love. It is life-giving, life-laying-down. It requires much, more than I know how to give; I grasp what strength I have and hope He will bridge the difference.

And if He doesn't? Well, I know about that. That's when I free-fall. That's when trusting His heart gives me strength to say anyway that "God is good, isn't He?" Sometimes that is more of a question than a statement. And sometimes it is just what I know, because I know His love deep now.

...

Wednesday.

The learning to love like Jesus happens quiet. It is not glamorous like I'd hoped. It is daily, kairos framed in chronos.

Kairos because it is outside time, because Christ-love never fails. Kairos because Jesus is God, God has no beginning or end; God is Love - I cannot fathom the infinite.

I grab another water bottle from beneath my desk. I need to keep drinking, swallowing help over my sore throat, so Bredon can have enough to eat. It is nearly dinner time.

Time to love, I think.

------------------------


This post also linked at Holy Experience for Walk With Him Wednesday.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Love Stories: God and Me, Part I

Once upon a time...

That's pretty much the way all good love stories begin, isn't it? The fairytale kind, the ones that star a beautiful princess and a handsome Prince Charming. (He is always "Prince Charming," because giving him a name humanizes him, and we can't have a Prince with flaws, now can we?)

Here I must dispense with my Dickensian rambling and begin my love story. Which does not require a once-upon-a-time. The princess is a normal gal with beauty issues, and the Prince - well, He has a name, a human name. "God with us."

...

I never know quite where to begin this story.

Sometimes, it seems that it must begin way back before I was ever born, in my mom's desire for a baby girl, in her long wait, the womb-knitting, and the beginning of her birth pains. Sometimes, it goes all the way back before the foundation of the world, with a Father's love for His Son, with a God-love for the world that gave.

But all of that happened long before I was aware of God, long before I was old enough to suspect His love. No, I first encountered the love of God between my year at Bible college and my Freshman year at the four-year school I attended until my health forced me to drop out.

Not that I hadn't been taught about its existence before. There is not a time in my life that I can pinpoint that I didn't know intellectually that God loved me. I grew up with God. I grew up with parents who loved me, and who taught me that God loved me. I grew up in church, and if there's one thing they teach you in Sunday School, it's that "God so loved the world..."

I memorized John 3:16 forty-eight times.

I knew that "the world" God loved was me.

But there is a difference between knowing someone loves you and knowing you are loved, and all the head knowledge in the world isn't enough to span that eighteen-inch gap of sermon-illustration fame.

I said a salvation prayer when I was a young child, on a day my parents never recorded, sometime around four years old. I remember kneeling beside a bed - it had a hush puppies bedspread; I remember the butterflies playing with the puppies on it - and asking Jesus to be my savior. I knew enough at that point to understand that sin was something I didn't want to have, so the expedient thing to do was ask Jesus to forgive me, which I figured would pretty much take care of things.

Such was my faith as a child.

It seems that from the beginning of my life, I was meant to be God's. I can't explain it, His pursuit of me that has spanned twenty-eight years and eternity past. In many ways, it has been for me a consistent deconstruction of what I thought I knew about God.

I used to think He displayed His love for me by answering my prayers.

There was the time I sat down under a tree on our 25 acres and asked God to send a deer walking by after dinner. I was putting out my fleece... or hunting for venison? The deer didn't come the first night, so giving God a second chance, I changed trees. I went a little further down the path toward the back of our 25 acres. Still no deer.

I figured at that point that God wasn't too interested in proving Himself by answering my prayers.

So I began to think that He loved me by indulging me. Maybe He wasn't actively answering my requests, but as long as He didn't interfere with what I wanted, I felt loved enough.

I never expected Him to let my heart break...

...

On Thursdays this month (because I never know quite what to post on Thursdays), I am going to write out my love story. Not the one about my crushes or my first love or even my love for Pete - though those stories all play a part. Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista and Holley Gerth at (in)Courage challenged us to write out our God love stories, and I had one to share. BOY, do I have one to share.

So I know it's a little canned, being the "love month" and all, but I thought I'd take some time to write it out anyway. It's good for me to dwell on His love for me.

...

Tomorrow will be my second "Leftovers" post, complete with a McLink-up for readers to share your own reposts.

NOTE - I am offering "Leftovers" as an opportunity to justify reposting a post you love. You're welcome to join this carnival of original unoriginality (since you've already said it!) here at my blog - just follow the steps below:

*REPOST a favorite blog post at your blog
*Please kindly INCLUDE A LINK to my blog in your explanation for your repost ;-)
*LINK the direct link for your repost (not the original post) into the McLinky I will provide here.
*LEAVE A COMMENT so I know you're there.

Hopefully, in two weeks, when I host "Leftovers" again (yeesh, people, if you have a nicer, more poetic, romantic name for it, leave a comment - NOBODY likes leftovers, right?), I will try and have an irresistible button for you (with CODE!) to add to your repost.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)