Live Loved

A few months ago in church, we had to write ourselves a note about what we felt God was asking of us in that moment. Mine was this:

Love without restraint

I have a very tender heart, and I guard it maybe a little too much these days. When your heart takes too much damage, you take care to protect it from further incidences of pain, turmoil, and emptiness. You stop risking the maybes and what ifs and live only for the sure things. Well, my friends, there is only one sure things in this life and it is that we will all one day die. So, I ask myself now, why not take some risks, live more fully now, and know that your regrets when death comes are not ones about the roads not taken? 

There are no guarantees in life. Even the most beautiful marriages can come crumbling down. Even those who are living a life surrendered to the Lord can fall. How often has it happened even in the Bible? David knew the Lord, but still he chose to take Bathsheba into his bed and then when she was pregnant, he sent for her husband who didn't lay with her, and David had him sent to the front lines to die to cover his sinfulness. The devil prowls even more fervently around those who know the Lord and are reflecting Him and sharing Him with others.

I have a friend who I care about very much. His story is a lot like my own. He wants so much to be loved, but he is looking for that love in another human. I remember thinking I found that when I found my husband. Again when I had my first son. All of that love is temporary and bound in circumstance. Even as we try to love unconditionally, conditions lie in our hearts and that of others. How we want to be loved is sometimes not met by those people we expect it of and those unmet expectations chip away at our hearts and leave us wanting. We fill those places with work, with escape, with food or alcohol or drugs, with sex, with porn, and the list goes on and on. But the emptiness goes unfilled by these lesser things. There is only one thing that can fully fill the empty void. 

I remember hearing it said that we have a God-shaped hole within us that only He can fill. I also recall from a class I took having it explained as the longing we have for the Creator as we have this notion about something we need and that calls to us, but we can't quite put our finger on what it is. When you come to know Christ, though, little by little or in a big, rushing moment, you finally know what it is that you've been looking for all your life. And when you know this, know Him, everything begins to change. We begin to know what it is to live loved. Fully loved. Not because of who we are or what we have done or haven't done. Loved because He made us, knows us, and chose us. So, I choose to lean into Him and know what it is to Live Loved!