The Way of Love

"I don't like hazelnut creamer."

My husband looked flabbergasted. He was speechless. After a long pause he said, "What? How could you not like hazelnut creamer after I have been making your coffee with it for the last 8 years? Why didn't you say anything?"

You can only imagine John's confusion. Why would I hold out on such a thing?? The truth be told I was clueless as to what I liked and what I disliked. I didn't really pay much attention to it, and when I did I felt guilty or convinced myself that it didn't matter, or shouldn't matter.

When I was a little girl I played with a sweet girl, Jennifer who lived up the hill from our small trailer. One night I was visiting her family for dinner. Her father asked me what I would like, and if I would want more. My reply, "I don't care. It doesn't matter."  

I hate to admit the insatiable insecurity I have wrestled with for most of my life. I would love to say that my knees never locked in front of a crowd, my voice never quivered, mole hills didn't grow into mountains, and my mind was always free of fear ... but this would be a lie. For most of my life I created a rating system for myself, and I strove for standards that were ridiculous. For most of my life I believed myself a failure even before I tried, and I would give up on tasks that seemed fated to end in failure. For most of my life I have been tempted to deny my flaws, hide them, or hide myself because of them. You see, although I trusted and believed in Jesus as my Savior as a little 6 year old girl, His acceptance and love for me seemed to be a fantasy. I believed others to be "Princesses and daughter's of the King." I longed for this to be true for me, but I believed myself to be a step-daughter, tolerated because that's what God does. He had to love me.

The truth is God does not promise that He will merely tolerate you or me. There aren't first rate Christ-followers somehow getting His attention and favor, and then ... the rest of us. It is so easy to form these kind of deep core beliefs out of our personal experiences and interactions with others. Abandonment, abuse, rejection, betrayal, marginalization, deception, etc. ... these experiences and others often seem to be what proves our beliefs that either God does not love us as He says, or that there must be something incredibly wrong with us to keep His love away.

These beliefs form deep insecurity, shame, loneliness. They fuel our addictions and compulsions to hide, strive, numb, please, pretend, preform. This is not the way of freedom. This is not the way of life or love. 

So how do we live, and live abundantly in a broken world, and with the wounds of life? The scariest first step is we allow our wounds to breathe. Even the wounds we have inflicted upon ourselves and others. We bring them to the light cautiously and carefully to someone safe, and to Jesus. We allow our stories to be heard (thus those of us who know grace must be safe and allow the stories to be told). If needed, we allow the poison to be drained as the emotions surge as if it just happened.  We allow others to see us for who we really are, and we allow them to treat us differently, not as we have treated ourselves, neglecting and isolating, but as Jesus treats us, with dignity, grace, and love. 

Like a balm, the Spirit pours a new strength into us. It doesn't erase our wounds and all of their effects but His strength works through our wounds and weaknesses. Slowly we learn what our hearts need, and we do for ourselves what no one can do for us. No one can renew our minds for us. No one can take our thoughts captive and replace them with truth for us. No one can turn us away from our sins of choice. No one can "put off, put on" for us. And so we begin to choose, versus react. We stumble. We trip. We may take two steps forward, one step back, but He doesn't leave and He doesn't give up. He continues to work in us and through us, giving us what we need to live as He intended, the way of life and love.

In our new strength, in which our weaknesses are now His assets, we learn to gaze into the mirror of scripture that reveals to us the image we were created in. We choose to sit in the presence of the One who redeems this image we bear that has been marred, warped, and tainted by sin. We learn the difference between the voices of our past, our condemning voice, and His whisper. We pause and listen. We begin to believe what He says over the old way. We choose to risk, and we open up to spiritual friends who reinforce the truth of who we are ... Worthy, and as we become more and more free from our self-preoccupation we begin to do the same for them. We begin to believe the truth and we begin to actively participate in the way of love.