A painstakingly honest confession would be to say that I am broken. The deeper confession would be that when the Lord revealed to me His plans to break many of our hearts for what breaks His, I thought that there was no way for Him to break my heart. I thought to myself, "Why would He want to break my heart? Haven't I been broken enough by this world?" And until about two weeks ago, I fought against breaking, so sure I was going to stand on my own self sufficiency and strength to carry me through the rest of this summer. But, for my brokenness, He's given me love that was promised to be unfailing, and deeper than we could ever love in this world.
The fact is that when I came home this summer, I thought I was just going to waste some time before skipping back to Nashville, the same, if not better strengthened than I felt when I came home. I was home for a mere two days before I realized that I was about to face a bitter world of destruction that could claim lives in a moment's time. The joy and peace I had brought back with me became replaced with fear and anger, sadness and confusion. I sat in the emergency room as they readmitted my brother into intensive care for the second time in a month. And as I watched him lay down in a hospital bed, it was like that, I watched him lay his life down before Satan. He's given in; to this world and his illness, letting Satan come and kill, steal, and destroy his being, and I'm staring death in the face every time I look at him.
It's been two months since my brother got out of the hospital. And now I'm sitting in my room, staring at a crib, letting the music of the mobile play to mask the breathing of a six month old boy. The Lord didn't prepare me to come home and watch my brother slowly kill himself, nor did He prepare me for the role of mother to his six month old son. I never expected to fall so in love with a little boy, but my heart, as it breaks for his innocence in such a vile situation, is captured in his smile and his laughter. A smile that wreaks the truth behind the word love, and a laugh that assures me that God is behind it all; it is all I cling to in the most difficult moments.
John 15:9- "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love."
Let's be honest. A year ago, I would have been incapable of loving someone the way I've learned to love this summer. Love entails compassion, a tender heart, and a revelation of humility in heart connection. Everything I didn't have.
Snapping back into this dark reality, I sat my nephew on my brother's lap last week, but as I pulled back, he looked at me with tear-filled eyes and let out a cry that reminded me of the past two months of joy and pain, beauty and mourning, love and sadness. It was at that moment that I realized what it meant to abide in His love. There is no way I did what I did this summer by my own strength and will. I could tell DJ that I loved him, kiss him, hug him, give him baths and cereal, but that was as far as my humanity would take me alone. God's love is sweeter and boundless. His kisses are better. His hugs are warmer. And there was no way that those sleepless nights with a fussy and teary eyed baby, those moments that I wanted to lay down and not be bothered with such infantile needs, those moments when my compassion needed to be greater than my own frustration were outlasted by my own flesh. The outcome was way too sweet, love in abundance ten times more than the moment before, compassion for the innocence that was unable to speak his pain and release his frustration. At that second, as he reached for me from my brother's lap, I held back the tears that my eyes wanted to shed, and asked God to overcome with His love and faithfulness. And I walked away.
I've meditated on the Father's love over the past week, since that day in my brother's house. My love for my nephew can in no way compare to that love, or at least that is what my conclusion has been. It is too great to measure. It is the love that promises everlasting life. The love that calls us children, brides, lovers. The love that overcomes all sin and all burdens. The love that calls us, saying "Come to Me. I am all you need. I sustain you when you cannot sustain yourself. And I will make you whole. You are made perfect in me." That love that is the very essence by which my brother is still alive and by which my nephew cannot grasp the love that is for him; when that love shows itself, there is nothing that could ever be against us. That is the love that never fails.
1 John 4:18 says that "perfect love casts out all fear", a concept that sometimes is so beyond our grasps. His perfect love carries me through my fears of incapability, lack of sureness, my weakness. Just like it carried us through the desert times, times on mountains, times of pain and confusion. There were numerous times this summer when I questioned if I was doing the right thing by my brother and by my nephew, and I became fearful of what life would be like when I leave. Fear says that he won't thrive or that my brother will die. But His perfect love removes that fear, not only from my heart, but also in the knowledge that He is also the covering over everything that is lacking in my family.
We're called to love; love our neighbors as ourselves, love the lost, the sinful, the broken, love beyond our fleshly desires. And it's a struggle when we want so badly to blame someone for a bad decision or when we get caught up in our own pity. Because the truth is that our love fails in the deepest areas. We change, growing in faith and in being, but along the way we trip and misstep. But He remains. Always and everlasting. Never changing. And it is His love that we must let shine through us; because it is Him that is unfailing and perfect. When we fail, He is our strength and vision.
Psalm 139:13- For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.
Jeremiah 1:5- "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.."
This is the love of the Father who created us. I like to think about how much I daydreamed about who my nephew was when he was still in the womb. And how much our parents daydreamed about us before we were born. All the giggling and excitement, your dad talking to you from the outside- in... we think it cannot get any better; that that love is as strong as it gets. But imagine the love that knew you before you were even conceived; it is mind blowing and heart wrenching to know that there is one person who chose you for your parents, chose to make you to be adopted, chose you to be born with challenges, chose your heart's passions and your body's defenses, chose YOU. Before you were even conceived, let alone born. And yet, so often, we run from that kind of love, which is the essence of who God is.
This summer, I don't know about you, but I have been forced to stand in the center of this love. And to drown in the aspects of it that I wanted to run from for so long...who really wants someone to know the deepest parts of them that have scared off others in the past? But over that fact, I have found a love that is greater than life, one that calls us to lean on Him and let Him love through us. And the finalization is something beautiful and only comprehensible when we cling to the Father's love.
So let us let Him be the known and the unknown, as is the love that we portray.
