I'm reading The Bean Trees right now by Barbara Kingsolver. The main character spends much of the book loving a battered child into wellness. Attempting to care for her in a way that says you are worthwhile and that the past doesn't define you. And yet the world attempts to rob this child and her lover of the ability to fight and to continue thriving in love.
Have you ever witnessed someone changed by love?
There is evidence that love changes people. Changes their hearts, their bodies, their brain chemistry.
I know God's love has changed me. He loves me into living differently. I don't mean as much in my behaviors but in how I see myself and the world.
I hate that this world robs people of love and more that it robs them of the ability to receive love. It is a nasty, horrible thing. I cling to the hope that love can triumph, trumping the very walls that defend against it.
Love well, friends.
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For the past several years my love has become little more than a reduction of what I know I am called to do and be both to God and the people around me. I have been somewhat aware of this sad truth for a while now but have spent little time actually thinking about it. Its dominance over my entire out look on and approach to life has come so far that I hardly noticed myself shut down and tune out as I briefly skimmed over this post for the first time. I immediately heard myself saying 'there is no room for this in your life now'. And indeed, I have made little room in my life lately for the kid of love that changes me, that moves me. And thus, I am stuck - stuck in a loveless life that is proving to be more miserable by the day - the only variable being how many or how few distractions there are present to keep my from the full awareness of this sad state.
For me, love has always needed to be about more than just a fleeting emotion, more that just a tingling feel-good sensation that no matter how deeply felt is always subject - to some degree - to circumstance. Even when I first began to date Brian and grew to love him, my love was much more about a process than a state of being. I have always been very skeptical about where my emotions lead.
Yet, I have known a love to much greater than the frivolity of my feelings - one that is more than just determination and commitment to faithfulness in a covenant relationship. I have known a love that cleans out my deepest wounds and slowly mends me back to health - a love that compels me to move in ways I would not otherwise move - a love that brings true life, change and growth.
But I have lost that love.
This morning in my journal (a makeshift one on notebook paper because, really, when was the last time I saw my journal?), before pondering any of this, I wrote: : 'Something inside me feels lost and this void is making me fear loss all the more'. If perfect love drives out fear than the absence of love causes is to grow. And so there I was (and still kind of am)- buried in the rubble of my fear and lovelessness - not knowing where to turn.
Thankfully I live in the age of Biblegateway.com or else my neglect of my own personal Bible would surely be my detriment. I clicked onto my only known source of help in times of such desperation and I was led straight here:
'As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.'
I have been wandering around in the yard waste of the dead branches spoken of in the preceding passages in John 15. I have had no distinguishable want for this kind of love in my heart of late. The irony is that more than ever I find myself wanting to MOVE, to change, to grow, to fear NOT yet I continue to reject the one and only true catalyst. Christ's unfailing LOVE.
In the past few weeks I have been stuck to the core by news of tragedy, unfavorable circumstances and persistent ill health. I bear wounds both new and reopened. I need Love. Thanks for helping me see what I have been so blinded to.
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