The Many Versions of Love

 [Originally posted on GoCorps blogs on February 15, 2021]

Yesterday the United States celebrated Valentine’s Day and Ecuador celebrated día de amor y amistad (day of love and friendship), and it got me thinking about all the different forms of love there are in this world. There’s romantic love, familial love, platonic love…and then there’s all the things we call love but really aren’t, like lust.

All the true types of love are beautiful and necessary for fullness of life, but none of them can compare to the perfect love that God has for us. This kind of love, called agape love, is (by one definition) the selfless, sacrificial, and unconditional love God demonstrates for humanity. This is love given in a way that we as humans are not capable of and yet every one of us as humans crave. So we look to friends, family, significant others to fill this void within us, but they will never be able to do that. Only God has the capacity to love us with agape love. And what joy! He delights to love us with his agape love.

Agape love is life-changing. While we cannot fully show agape love because only God is capable of that level of selflessness and sacrificiality, this is the kind of love we try to show the women and children in End Slavery Ministries Ecuador. The kind of love that most of our participants never imagined was real, even if it's what they've craved their whole lives. God knows I'm not perfect at it, but I hope and I pray that the love we show to our participants is enough for them to believe that God's love, which is so much greater, actually exists and can exist for them. If we love them, then maybe God can love them, too (I fully realize this is backwards, we love because God first loved us, but to our participants who have been shown so little love in their lives, understanding often comes in this order). And if God loves them and we love them, maybe they can love themselves. Maybe they are worthy of love and respect.

It breaks my heart to see these beautiful women and children not understand how precious they are. It's such a long, difficult process for them to even begin to grasp their worth. But that process is so important and I will take every opportunity to show them that they are loved and are worthy of love. I'm grateful that Valentine's Day in Ecuador doesn't just celebrate romantic love, because it gives me one more opportunity to remind our participants that there are so many who love them, both perfectly and imperfectly.

Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

The Eternal Struggle

"I believe.  Help me in my unbelief."

Most of the time, I like to live in my make-believe world where I’m in control of my life and the situations I find myself in.  But every once in a while, like this week, God pulls the wool from over my eyes and I am reminded of just how little I actually have control over.  During those glimpses into reality, I can feel the anxiety building within me: the tightening in my chest, the whirring of my thoughts.

And yet in those moments, God, who is so gracious, never fails to remind me that He is with me, that He is and has been in control this whole time, that I can trust Him.  And my response is almost always that of the man in Mark 9:24.  “I believe.  Help me in my unbelief.”  I know that what God tells me is true.  I know that it is far better to let go and trust Him with my very self.  And yet, there is a strong part of me that rebels against that.  It rebels because of sin, yes, but mostly because of fear.  It is absolutely terrifying to face the reality that I am not and can never be fully in control, even as I recognize that I am not the one who should be in control.

Yet God is so incredibly gracious and patient with me, because each time I make this request of Him, He does.  God never gives up on me or even rebukes me for my unbelief.  He honors my heart, which desires to let go of the overwhelming fear and choose to have faith in him.  He holds my hand and whispers to me His promises over and over again: that He is with me, that He will never let go, that I can trust in Him.

And for a moment, I believe.

This is a time and season of great uncertainty.  Fear will assault each of us in different ways.  But each time we are assaulted, we have a choice to make.  Belief and unbelief live within each of us.  Which will we choose to fight, and which will we choose to embrace?

For the Love of Comfort

For the last 20ish years of my life, I’ve been learning how to be a competent, productive member of society.  And I feel like I’ve been pretty successful at that.  So the question is, what do I do now that I’m in a place where 90% of my competency has been stripped away?

I moved to a new country just over a month ago and it has been one of my most humbling, difficult experiences of my life.  When I got here, my level of communication in Spanish was roughly that of a semi-literate toddler (or at least it felt that way to me!).  I couldn’t get around on my own, go to the grocery store, or hold a basic conversation with anyone, much less use any of the professional skills that I worked so hard to attain.  My first night in my new home, I was unsuccessful in figuring out how to get hot water from the shower, and I didn’t have the language skills to ask my host mom what to do.  It’s been a very humbling experience.  But it’s an experience that’s forced me to reevaluate the answers that I have assumed to be true for some important questions in my life.

The first question was this: Am I willing to extend to myself the same grace that God extends me?  In high school, I had a teacher comment, “Sometimes I think we expect more from you than God does.”  And that is certainly true for my expectations of myself.  Time and time again in these last few weeks, I’ve felt God nudging me, asking me to give myself grace when I can’t communicate what I so desperately want to, or when I need to take yet another nap because I’m just so tired, or when I’m crying over some absolutely stupid thing going wrong.

And every time that happens, I have to ask myself the second question: Where does my value come from?  Because, if I’m being honest, I act most of the time as though my value comes from my ability to contribute to the environment that I’m in.  I think that I’m valued for being productive, or generous, or kind, or some other attribute that benefits the community I’m a part of.  But the truth is that I’m valued by God because I am His.  Period.  And so it’s been important for me to recognize that the reason this season of feeling incompetent has been so difficult is because I was placing my worth in my competence, rather than in my permanent status as God’s beloved child.  I was never going to be competent enough to be worthy of love, but it was easy to convince myself that I could do just that when I was in an environment where I was pretty darn good at what I did.  And so it’s been quite the experience to have all that stripped away from me.  But I’ve been so blessed to have God remind me daily that I am loved for me, not my skills or abilities.  And it’s also been such a blessing to have some incredible new coworkers that have encouraged and grounded me in this season.

So to answer the original question…What do I do now that my competencies have been stripped away?  First, I take this beautiful opportunity to recognize the lies I’ve been believing and realign myself with God’s truth.  Then, I learn to give myself grace in the struggle (and recognize that it’s okay to admit I’m struggling!).  Finally, as I slowly relearn how to be a functioning human being in this new environment, I remind myself every day that I am loved because of who I am as God’s child, not for what I can do.

Fully Known and Fully Loved

You are fully known and fully loved.

That sentence contains both my greatest fear and my greatest desire.  I don’t think I’m alone in that.  The idea of being fully known is terrifying because it makes me utterly vulnerable.  Being fully loved is the deepest desire of my soul.  But you cannot be fully loved without being fully known.  Being completely loved is only possible if the lover is privy to the entirety of the object of their love.  It’s like when someone is being sworn in at court and promises to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”  Without those conditions, the truth can be manipulated and it’s not the perfect truth anymore.  The same is true of love.  If I am not wholly known I cannot be perfectly loved.

But being wholly known is so frightening that it is almost paralyzing.  Have you ever heard of Imposter Syndrome?  Imposter Syndrome is a psychological phenomenon where a person is constantly in fear of being exposed as a fraud, typically with regard to their personal or professional achievements, despite objective evidence of success.  Research by Jarawan Sakulku and James Alexander in the International Journal of Behavioral Science indicates that up to 70% of people will experience this phenomenon at least once in their lives.

I think that Imposter Syndrome applies in this situation.  The phrase, “if they really knew me…” comes to mind.  It’s this idea that if I don’t even like all of me, how can I expect someone else to? That I am unlovable because of my sin, or that others have a higher opinion of me than they would if they could see my darkness.  And so I hide my flaws from others because I don’t want them to think less of me.  I modulate my words and actions to appear more “acceptable.”  I become less than what I am in pursuit of being liked more.

There are a couple issues here, a few lies that I accepted as truth somewhere along the way.  This first is the idea that I have to be perfect to be loved, or that to be loved someone must like all of me.  Now I know this is a lie, because despite their being imperfect people (as we all are), I love my family dearly and I would do just about anything for them.  Nothing could ever get me to stop loving them.  And I may not know the depths of their hearts, but I have seen enough to dispel any illusion of perfection!  I also know that they love me, despite many years’ worth of evidence of my own imperfections.

So that is one lie that I can refute.  But there is an even more important truth to acknowledge.  Because although I do not doubt my parents’ love for me, they are imperfect people and they love me imperfectly, just as I am imperfect and love them imperfectly.  Yet there is One who loves me completely, fully, and perfectly, and that is God.  God does not just love us, He is love (1 John 4:8).  He is perfect and so is His love.  And we never have question, “if He really knew me…” because He does know us completely.  Psalm 139:13 says, “For your created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”  Since before we were ever born, God knew the trajectory of our lives, our hopes and desires, our secrets and our sins.  God is never surprised by what we think or feel or do.  And He chose to die for us regardless.  He chose to love us regardless.

And just a quick note here, when I was young, I used to think that God died for humanity as a collective, meaning that it might not have been worth it for him to die for me, individually, but it was worth it for him to die for humanity as a group.  But this just isn’t true.  The truth is that God loves us individually as well as collectively.  St. Augustine, a 4^th century Christian theologian and philosopher, is attributed with saying, “If you were the only person on earth, Christ would have still suffered and died for you.”

God is omniscient.  He knows all of us, even the deepest, darkest parts of our souls.  And he perfectly loves us anyway.  It’s such a wonderful thought that it’s almost beyond comprehension, but the greater joy is that it is true.

You are fully known.  But fear not, for you are also fully loved.

Sakulku, Jaruwan, and James Alexander. “The Imposter Phenomenon.” International Journal of Behavioral Science, www.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/IJBS/article/view/521/pdf.

What to do When God Asks for More Than You Can Give

When I was 18, I asked my high school youth leader, “What if God asks me to marry someone I don’t love?”

His questioning reply was, “Why do you think he would do that?”

My response: “He did to Esther.”

See, I’ve known from the time I was very young that my life was not my own.  From the time I was 9 and decided that God was telling me to become a missionary, I have imagined my life ending early à la Jim Elliot.  Now, I may never marry someone I don’t love and I may live a long, peaceful life, but the point of those stories is that I came to grips early on with the fact that following Christ meant that I was choosing to obey His plan and His will, rather than my own.  I have always known that I would sacrifice a lot to follow Christ.  I knew that God would ask difficult things of me, and that it would be worth it.  But knowing that does not make living it out any easier.

A few months ago I was presented with an opportunity to serve God overseas.  At first, it seemed the perfect opportunity, but as I realized what exactly this would entail I struggled with questions of first whether I was capable and second whether I was ready to make the sacrifices to pursue this.  It feels as though God has asked me to give more than I am capable of.  It has been a long, difficult road filled with soul searching and spiritual battles.  And I’m not at the end of it yet.  Honestly I’ve been struggling for over a month to write this blog post because I simply did not know the answer to the title question. 

What do you do when God asks for more than you can give?  I can’t answer that for you, maybe I can’t answer that at all, but I can tell you what I have been doing through this process.

#1. Remind myself of truth amongst the chaos of my mind.  Truth: I am hurting over what God is asking of me.  Truth: I am loved completely by God.  Truth: God is good.  Truth: My life is not about me.

Some of these truths are comforting, some are hard, some resonate deeply, and some feel so far away right now.  But they are true and truth is solid.  Amongst my chaotic, shifting thoughts and emotions, I can stand on these truths.  They are my guiding stars.

Which leads me to #2: Praise God through the tears.  Yes, I am hurting.  My heart feels like it is breaking over the things God is asking me to give up.  But I will honor and glorify him through the tears.  I will continue to sing his praises.  Because even though I do not feel like God is good at the moment, I know that he is.  Deep to my very soul, I know the truth. 

Therefore #3: I will obey.  Based on the truth of who God is, I chose a long time ago that I would obey him, no matter what.  And so through my tears and my hurt and my heartbreak, I will obey.  Because God is still better.  I wrote in my last blog post that following God costs everything.  I certainly wasn’t lying about that.  But I also said, and believe, that in following God I gain everything and more.

There are things that I want and things that I need.  Right now, there are two paths before me and each of them has a cost.  In one, I foresee the cost will be at least temporarily losing my family, my friends, everything that makes me comfortable and everything I know and love.  In the other, the cost seems to be losing the depth of my relationship with God.  It would break my heart to lose my family and friends, but it would break me completely to lose God.  I don’t want to lose my family.  I cannot lose God.

This has been an extraordinarily trying season of life for me.  I have felt as though God was asking more of me than I could give.  I have cried a little a lot and cried out to God even more.  But ultimately, I trust God implicitly.  I trust his plans and I trust his character.  And so even through the tears, even through the fear, even through whatever comes my way, I will say “yes” to anything God asks of me.

What is your relationship with God worth to you?

As I was reading through the book of James for a study I’m in right now, I misread James 4:4, which says, “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?”  But as I read this quickly, I thought it said, 

“Do you not know that friendship with God is worth enmity with the world?”

Wow.  While the true passage is absolutely correct, and makes significantly more sense in the context of the chapter than what I read, that rhetorical question God put into my head stopped me dead in my tracks.  I have been a Christian for more than fifteen years, and something I still struggle with daily is seeking approval from those around me, those I can physically see and hear and interact with, rather than God.  But I say (and believe) that my relationship with God is the most important thing in my life.  And through this simple misreading of scripture God again forced me to recall the fact that my relationship with him is worth more than the approval of the world.  I can practically hear His voice breaking as he asks me, “Don’t you know?  How do you not understand?  I am worth more than anything the world can offer you.  I want to give you so much more.”

To be a friend of God’s is worth (and will cost) the enmity of the world.  Yes, it is part of my duty as a Christian to, “as much as it depends on [me], live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18).  But this incredible, precious, amazing opportunity I have been granted?  The chance to have an intimate relationship with the creator of the universe who gave up his own life for mine?  That is worth far more than the approval of those around me.  It is worth more than the temporary satisfaction I receive when I complain at work and my coworkers agree with me.  It is worth more than the misplaced pride I feel when I listen to gossip about how someone did not do their job well and I think, “I would never do that.”  It is worth more than giving into the temptation to be cynical, or abrasive, or argumentative about the myriad of issues facing our broken world today.  It is worth more than all the worst and all the best that this world can offer me.  It is worth more, because He is worth more.  I do not deserve this God of mine, this friend of mine, but I am so grateful for Him.  To me, His friendship is worth enmity with the world.

What is it worth to you?

The Devil is a Liar

Today’s blog post is a bit different, and to be honest, I’m really not sure how it will work out since I’m pretty sure I have approximately 3 readers (hi, Dad!).  But I just finished reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis and I was reminded of the spiritual warfare that we face each day, even when we don’t recognize it.  And one of the Enemy’s greatest tools in spiritual warfare is the lies that we are told, or that we tell ourselves, each day.  I’m a big fan of recognizing and confronting spiritual warfare, so today I wanted to dig in a bit to one of the lies that I’ve been struggling with lately, as well as open up the opportunity for y’all to share any lies you may be facing.

Here goes: I’ve really been struggling lately with not feeling close to God.  There are a lot of reasons for this: I’m not as plugged into godly community right now as I was back in college, and if I’m being really honest here I’ve not been as consistent with my quiet times as I would like.  While there is certainly room to improve there, it has brought back a lie that I have struggled with for some time, which is that when I don’t feel close to God then I’m not close to God and/or I’m doing something wrong in my Christian walk.

Praise God that is not how Christianity works. 

1) To use some “Christianese,” we cannot live in the mountaintops.  As a simple human, I cannot sustain the emotional highs of being close to God.  My life is lived in a series of mountains and valleys and the transition between them.  The mountains and the valleys are revealing and sometimes life changing, but most of life is lived somewhere in between.  And that’s a good thing!  Because in this in-between space I have the opportunity to be faithful and obedient despite not “feeling” close to God.  In The Screwtape Letters, Wormwood (the master tempter) says to his nephew (a junior tempter), 

“Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”  

Now I’m not sure I’m quite there yet, though I’ve certainly had days of questioning like this in the past, but it was still a striking reminder that my obedience should not be based on my emotions, but on my trust in God’s character and the promise that I have made to follow him unequivocally.

2) I am so very grateful that God has promised, “never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5, Joshua 1:5).  Over and over again, God promises to be with us (Mt 28:20, Joshua 1:9, etc.) promises that he is faithful (Dt 7:9, Ps 33:4, etc.), promises himself to us (Eph 5:25-27).  His promises are true and trustworthy (Ps 145:17).  So when I’m exhausted from trying to hold on and make myself feel something, I can take peace and comfort from the fact that God will never let me go.  I am his and I am his forever.  I love the line in Just Be Held by Casting Crowns that says to “stop holding on and just be held.”  Sometime I’m like a little child, try to clutch so tightly to God for fear that he will disappear, when all I need to do is relax and be held, knowing that I am secure in his love and in his care.

When I’m caught in the grip of a lie, the most effective thing for me to do is remember that while my emotions may deceive me, I can trust in the truth of God’s word.  These Bible verses remind me that the truth of the situation is far removed from my anxious imaginings.  Whatever lie I’m facing, a verse I turn to often is Proverbs 3:5-6, which says to “trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path.”  The lies that cloud my mind can often confuse me, but I know that I can trust God, the author of truth, to direct my path and reveal these lies for what they are.

So that’s been my struggle over the past few weeks.  Is there anything that has been on your heart that you’ve been struggling with, or maybe a lie that you are just now recognizing?  I’d love to hear about it to celebrate God revealing truth, or maybe if you are just recognizing a lie to pray for you and share some Bible verses that can combat it.  Feel free to leave a comment below or message me!  As always, I'm praying for you!

Who Tells Your Story

“You have no control/Who lives, who dies, who tells your story” Hamilton, History Has Its Eyes On You

Like many people, I’m totally a Hamilfan (yes, I’m a geek.  I embrace it).  During the first act in the song “History Has Its Eyes On You,” George Washington tells Hamilton that, “you have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story.”

When I first listened to the album, I was immediately struck by these lyrics.  Our entire lives we (or I, at least) strive for control.  I want to control my environment, my finances, my future.  But on a day to day basis, what I try to control the most (albeit often subconsciously) is others’ perceptions of me.  I want to control who tells my story and what story they are telling.  Bluntly, I want people to like me and to think well of me.  I think that’s a fairly common desire and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be liked.  However, what I often forget is that I have no control over people’s perceptions of me.  I can be sweet as pie and there will still be people in this world who do not like me.  And that’s okay.  In fact, if there is no one that dislikes me then I’m probably not being bold enough with my faith (but that’s a post for another time!).

And when I’m so focused on what other people think of me, I forget about the opinion that really matters: God’s.  As Paul puts it in Galatians 1:10, “Am I now trying to seek the approval of man, or of God?”  Whose opinion of me is worth more?  The friends, coworkers, and strangers that I desperately try to win over, or the God of the universe who created me and that I have promised to serve with everything in me?  So rather than “perform” for others and worry over their perception of me, I can choose to act “in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ” (Philippians 1:27).  I can choose to be kind, to be compassionate, to be hardworking, to have integrity.  I can choose to be the kind of person I want to be, rather than the kind of person I think those around me want for me to be.  I can choose to serve God and not man. 

Because ultimately, who tells your story is not nearly as important as the One who wrote it.

Truth has power

Truth has power.  To some, this power is inspiring.  To others, this power is threatening.  Yet the power of truth is that whatever your reaction to it, you cannot change it.  Truth is not relative or responsive to our desires.

One truth that I have certainly wished would be responsive to my desires, but I am more and more finding myself inspired by, is the truth that my life is not about me.  I have been created and designed for a specific and purpose, and that purpose is to glorify God and to serve others.

Yeah, that was a struggle for me.  Because, on the one hand, I know my purpose in life.  Isn't that what we all want?  To have a purpose?  But on the other hand, it would be nice if my purpose could be about, well, me.  In my selfishness I want to be the center of my own life.

Yet there is the crux of the issue.  My life is not my own.  I was bought at a price (1 Cor. 6:20)  Because I recognize scripture as truth, I have to accept that my life is God's to do with as he pleases, and his good pleasure has shown me that my purpose is to glorify him and sacrifice myself for the sake of his creation.

But the funny thing is, when I finally stopped running from that (okay, sometimes I still run from it, but anyway...) I have found more joy and contentment in serving others than I ever did in serving myself.  I used to do gymnastics and I absolutely LOVED it.  I still love the sport and everything I learned from it.  But I never found the contentment in ten years of doing gymnastics that I find each day in fighting human trafficking, or bringing cookies to someone who is having a rough day, or seeing a child recognize how very much God loves them.

I think that society presses this idea onto us that in order to be happy, we have to search out things that are fun or exciting.  And this is not to say that fun things are bad, because I enjoy having fun as much as the next person.  But when I look at the building blocks of my life, my time and energy is not often spent on doing something "fun."  Most of my efforts are spent sacrificing and serving.  My life is not "fun."  But it is meaningful.  My actions have earthly and eternal effects.  And that is worth sacrificing for.  I am content with my life because I am fulfilling my purpose.  I am part of something greater than myself.  And that is powerful.

What truths have struck you lately with their power?  Is there a truth that you are running from because it threatens what you believe about yourself or the world?  If so, I'd love to hear about it, so feel free to message me or leave a comment below.