My counselor brought to my attention yesterday that I was once looking for proof of God's love and its very existence. I looked upon it with an attitude of "prove it!" and a strong doubt of it's evidence around me. Now, a couple months later, I find myself asking with sincerity what it actually looks like--God's love.
I am working my way through Redeeming Love a second time and I am looking for the metaphor, the relation to the love of God for His people, and the evidence of His love around me with an open heart.
Last night I was approached by the sweetest elderly woman in church who greets me at the door every Sunday morning with a hug. She always has a smile on her powder-soft face that is enveloped in carefully elevated black hair that sways upon her head as she moves. Her voice is tender, warm, and gentle with a Hispanic-sounding accent as she speaks. Her eyes are soft and welcoming, as though they are open vastly to give and receive tender love to me as I am greeted with a hug.
The sincerity of her love and care towards me is authentic, despite her limited knowledge of me and my life. I have only known her for just over 1 year, yet she greets me with such familiarity that I cannot doubt her authenticity. Her hugs are enveloping. I feel as though I could fall into her, leaving tension and worry behind. Is this what the love of Jesus feels like? Looks like? Sounds like?
When our welcoming embrace ends, a part of me is startled by sadness. A sense of longing comes over me. I want to stay, to be held, to remain in a space of safety where I am unconditionally loved and reassured of safety when the floodgates open and my face waters over. We do not. She looks into my eyes and says something kind such as "I love you. I care so much for you and I pray for you. Jesus loves you. You are a wonderful mother. God bless you." I know she means it and I try to embrace it. I truly do. I'm so thankful for her and I look forward to her faithfulness as the first face I see upon arriving at church. On my worst of mornings, she knows without my words. She hugs me, reassures me of God's love and her prayers, and I can walk away confident that is what "unconditional" looks like. She is one of the few people whose eyes validate her authentic words. There is no hollowness to her; only rich depth.
This same wonderful, Jesus-loving, God-sharing woman approached me last night at church. She hugged me, told me she loved me, and talked with me about "Calvary love". I don't recall what was said right before that phrase, but it stuck with me: "Calvary love". What does it mean? How does this speak of Jesus' love that I am searching for?
I know what love is not...
- Love is not yelling at me that I need to "just do what you're told".
- Love is not given only when I perform life and marriage tasks.
- Love is not only keeping a clean home, but a pure heart.
- Love is not demanding that another need to meet my emotional, physical, social, and mental needs. It is not my responsibility to boost others ego.
- Love is not hitting someone when they talk back.
- Love is not forcing someone to do things or say things they don't feel right about or that makes them feel unsafe.
- Love is not one-sided.
- Love is not yelling in someone's ear at midnight because you cannot sleep and see the dishes weren't done.
- Love is not taking someone's car keys or hard-earned money to spend it on booze.
- Love is not abandoning financial and personal responsibility to your family because you cannot be bothered with altering your own life plans.
- Love is not forcing others to act or speak a certain way that makes you feel better about yourself.
- Love is not spending other's hard earned money or spending your own frivolously so that others have to spend theirs on you.
- Love is not expecting children to act like robots, waiting for you to say 'jump'.
- Love is not "knocking some sense" into a person.
- Love is not telling a person to "cut it out" or to "quit your crying or I'll give you something to really cry about".
- Love is not withholding oneself until the other person does what you want them to.
- Love is not acting anything other than perfect, according to each person's definition that you meet and know.
- Love is not owing anyone for the things they do for us.
- Love is the patient waiting for someone to come to you or for you to go to them.
- Love is openly welcoming the person in without agenda or expectation beyond working for a resolution.
- Love is kindly acting in the best interest of the other person and having it reciprocated back.
- Love is celebrating in the victories of another, knowing they authentically care to celebrate in your victories too. There's no need to make something you have done seem better or bigger or worse because you realize that you both have successes and failures that you walk through together and grow.
- Love is wanting another to pursue what makes them come alive and supporting them to reach their potential (not what YOU THINK is their potential or what YOU THINK they should be doing).
- Love is kindly helping someone get work done together.
- Love is reaching out to a neighbor or friend in need of support or community.
- Love is responding kindly to children, remembering that you were once a child learning to grow up.
- Love is listening openly to the concerns and needs of others.
- Love is doing what you can to meet those needs.
- Love is self-sacrificial without self-death.
- Love is expressing positive statements to others without ulterior motives.
- Love is wanting the best for others.
- Love understands that some people are better at things/words/etc. than you and IT'S OK! We are all at different places, a work-in-progress, and on a journey.
- Love is forgiving and willing to work through things or move on, leaving offenses behind to live in freedom.
- Love is offering to watch someone's children for a couple hours when you see they are about to lose themselves.
- Love is accepting imperfection of yourself and others, accepting where you are and where they are in the here and now, knowing Jesus is working in each of our lives.
- Love is doing/saying things for others without expecting it to be reciprocated or returned.
When it comes to the love of Jesus, I am learning that His love is simple. He just gives it--no agenda or price tag. The trade-off? He wants me to give my love back. That's it. This feels tough to grasp when I have lived in conditional love for so long.
- I was loved when I did my chores right away, or without being asked, and without complaint. I was
- I was loved when I made and served food, with a smile, on-time.
- I was loved when I performed wifely duties, as a newly-wed, after 7-8yrs of marriage.
- I was loved when I agreed with the head of the household--no arguments or differing of opinions.
- I was loved when I said they were right.
- I was loved when I dressed pretty and looked nice.
- I was loved when my children always responded with kindness, respect, love, self-control, diligence, gentleness, humility, patience, safety, caution on-demand, risk-taking on demand, tenderness, thoughtfulness, initiative, thinking of others first, helpfulness, knowledge, sharing, giving to others first, etc.
- I was loved when I smiled all the time and never had tears unless they were for others.
- I was loved when I responded the way other thought I should and expected me to (even when it was counter to who I really was or trying to be).
- I am loved when I parent the way another person thinks I should be parenting.
- I was loved when I spoke sweetly.
- I was loved when I agreed.
- I was loved when I gave everything of myself and my things to others to use however they wish and to do whatever they want with my things given.
- I was loved when I was a straight-A student.
- I was loved when I met the needs of others before myself and at my own expense.
Do you see this list and shake your head at the unrealistic expectation others put on me and I on myself? Can you relate? Have you things to add to the list?
It amazes me how much others expect us to live according to their expectation when they do not have our best interest in mind, but only want us to adjust ourselves to fit them so they do not need to change. It is even more difficult when dealing with someone who thinks they are NOT the problem or have a responsibility in the situation. It's frustrating to love them because they are never satisfied, content, grateful for your love, or understanding of their hindrance of it.
I know what love is not. So what is love? Jesus is love, but what does it actually look like and what does it feel like? What does it look like towards me and how would I reflect it to others?
1 John 4:18 says "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love" (NIV).
When I was a child and then early in my parenting years, I was told that one day I would know what it was like for my parents when I had kids and that I would thank them one day. I was spoken to as though having my own children would make me realize I was terrible to my own parents and ask their forgiveness, telling them how right they were.
Parenting my own children has made me realize how hard parenting was for my own parents and how hard it is for other parents, but not in the way many people expected. I appreciate parental struggles, but having my own children has shown me how hard I make it on God to parent me.
As I try to parent and love my own children, I realize that I cannot love them as they need without letting God love me. I cannot love my children the way I want to until I let God love me the way He wants to. I cannot show His love to my children until I first let him show me His own. I cannot love my children without understanding the love of Jesus for me--Calvary love.
What is Calvary love that this woman from church speaks of?
Kim Lawton, reporting for PBS Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, reports " 'According to the New Testament, Jesus was crucified at a spot outside Jerusalem called Golgotha, which in Aramaic means “place of the skull.' The Latin word for skull is calvaria, and in English many Christians refer to the site of the crucifixion as Calvary" (Lawton, 2012).
The word calvary is familiar to me. As a child, I would sing along to the song At Calvary:
Mercy there was great
And grace was free
Pardon there was multiplied to me
There my Burdened soul found liberty
At Calvary
When the sweet woman from church said "Calvary Love" to me. I knew she meant the love that Calvary represented through the blood and sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
John 3:16 says, "for God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him, will not perish, but have everlasting life."
I feel broken some days and unable of real love, but then I am determined with most things in my life and won't give up, so I search for what real love is.
This morning I read Jeremiah 31:3-4 that says, "The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness. I will build you up again, and you, Virgin Israel, will be rebuilt. Again you will take up your timbrels and go out to dance with the joyful."
Jeremiah 31 talks about returning to God and the restoration they will receive after doing so. God will pour out his blessings upon them and they will thrive. Despite their waywardness, brokenness, sinfulness, impurities, and past pains, God WANTS them. He wants them?! Yes, He does. As I write this, I feel as though I am in shock myself. I have held onto pieces of myself too burdensome for God (so I thought). I have not been fully convinced that I am worth loving and able to be made into anything new after being so distorted. Yet, I read in Jeremiah and other places in the Bible that God takes the broken and uses them, redeems them, and restores them:
- Tamar -- slept with her father-in-law (Genesis 38:1-30) and was chosen by God to be in the lineage of Jesus. "Tamar is an example of courageously embracing her responsibilities, one that became a cause for blessing (Ruth 4:12) and ensured the familial line of Christ himself (Matt. 1:3)" (Huber, 2018).
- Sarah-- Doubted God.
- Rahab – Was a prostitute and the mother of Boaz, in the lineage of Jesus (Joshua 2:1, 3; 6:17-25; Matthew 1:5; Hebrews 11:31; James 2:25).
- Bathsheba -- King David's second marriage and the mother of King Solomon.
- Samaritan Woman – Divorced.
- Naomi – Was a widow in a foreign country.
- Martha – Worried about everything.
Once a woman, innocently enough, made me feel like my only hope for life after divorce is to
1. see the return of a repentant husband and our marriage restored, or
2. to live my life single as I serve God in my singleness.
These were harsh words to hear at the time and felt like the door being closed on the hope of redemption.
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”—Romans 8:28
My story and your story of broken, conditional love does not have to be our identity and ending. It does not have to steal our hope and joy. In my search for what love truly is, God is showing me. As I write this, I am not speaking as someone confident and without struggle. I am writing to get it out and make sense of my own thoughts, searches, and longings. I want to know what God's love really is because I had a skewed view of it for a very long time. I associated and connected God's love with people who had hurt me. I understood God's love to be something that someone else was and not who He is. I have not "arrived" at this understanding, but I am walking on the road to get there.
Will you join me? Will you walk with me in openness of what could lay ahead and to find what truly is?
References
- Huber, C. (2018). The ‘Bad Girls’ of the Bible Deserve a Fresh Look. Retrieved from https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/march-web-only/vindicating-vixens-sandra-glahn.html
- Lawton, K. (2012). Where was Jesus buried?. In Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/03/30/march-30-2012-where-was-jesus-buried/10645/
- Newell, W.R. (1895). At Calvary. Retrieved from https://library.timelesstruths.org/music/At_Calvary/
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