There are certain aspects of Love that come easy to me: being encouraging, loyal, supportive, honest. But then there are those areas (namely being patient) that seem so foreign I often wonder if they even apply to me.
Recently my husband, of 12 years on Dec 20, and I hit a roadblock in our relationship. It's actually the same roadblock we have hit over and over again in our relationship- you would think by now we would figure out that this path isn't working and we need to try a new way to avoid this roadblock in the future, but that is for another time. I was very articulate about my view of things and the way I felt things should go. I graciously invited my husband of few words to tell me all the ways I should change. He was too kind or to worn out from listening to my suggestions that he didn't have much to say. I left the table of discussion feeling rather good about where I stood, knowing that there was little I needed to do.
Do you feel it coming??? I didn't, but it didn't take long.
A lesson to be learned that is. So, I began hearing a question being asked over and over again. What is love? I was quick to answer "Love is patient, love is kind, love never fails." I felt pretty confident until I heard God's Spirit ask me- what else. So, I opened up 1 Corinthians 13
1 corinthians 13 - Passage Lookup - The Message - BibleGateway.com: and began reading a list that describes what love is and I began lingering over some of the descriptions and began to feel overwhelmed with how far I miss the mark on a daily basis. There were some on that list that were obvious struggles for me but then He began to show me the areas I have skipped over in the past. Areas I had neglected- areas that were leading me back to this same roadblock.
The biggest one came when I reread the passage in a different version. In most versions it says, Love trusts, but in The Message it says Love trusts God. He began to ask me whether I really trust Him. Do I trust Him to take care of me- do I trust Him to protect me- do I trust Him to continue working on my husband as He continues to work on me- do I trust Him to heal those hurts that seem untouchable - do I trust Him with my future and so on and so on and so on. How have I missed this? In that moment everything I felt so confident about- my view of our present situation and what needed to be done- came crumbling down. I realized that to let go of these things leaves me completely vulnerable to Father God and that was a really scary thing. Not because I can't trust Him but it meant I was no longer the one calling the shots and mapping things out. I realized just how much I have not been trusting God for and at that moment all I could do was pick up all those crumbled pieces and shove them over to Jesus.
It's funny because earlier that week I was listening to a teaching on the radio on a passage in Luke 9. It was a familiar passage - one I have even taught on- but on this day in the state I was in it all came home and became real to me. It's that passage where Jesus tells His disciples that anyone who wants to follow Him must pick up their cross and follow Him. The idea of dying to myself each morning became so real. Dying to what is most important to me. Dying to what I want the most on any given day. Deciding, what I want doesn't matter- because I am dead and I am following Jesus. Deciding, what I want to do, say, feel doesn't matter as much as what Jesus wants me to do, say or feel. One would think that the idea of dying and just following
someone else's plan would be stifling and wrong in someway, but I feel so free. Free to know that I do not have to map things out and figure it all out. Free from having to have all the answers. So, daily I am working on this and what's funny is that I now have so much work to do on myself that it leaves me little time to obsess over what my husband is or isn't doing. I guess I will
just have to trust that God is doing something over there too.
So, these are my observations about love:
Love is hard
Love is dying to self
Love is growing
Love is work
Love is freeing
