What a thousand things taught me about love
The journey began November 14th. A number of you joined me here, committing to write 1,000 things I love about you, as a Christmas gift for our husbands. I so loved hearing tales of your commitment to count praise-worthy attributes about your husbands, of making it a daily habit to look for the good.
I did it. For 40 days I listed 25 things each day, and at the end I had a grand idea for how to compile them all into a special presentation.
Suffice it to say: Everything went wrong. I bought the wrong kind of paper. Our printer quit working. The new printer would not install on my computer so the only printing I could do had to be on Jeff’s computer. Which he has with him. All. The. Time. And when he finally left the premises and I tried to sneak into his office to print and everything went wrong, the printer jammed, the computer froze, the paper was wrong, my files wouldn’t convert to his Mac, the ink smeared. Finally, Christmas Eve, after I got it printed and spent one freezing morning out in the barn trying to mod podge the paper onto a small old door we would hang above our bed in our new house, it was too cold and damp and the paper bubbled up in a ridiculous mess making the entire creation look like something a preschooler slapped together.
NOT what I had in mind.
I had anticipated a grand presentation Christmas morning. The reality was me reluctantly handing over an odd, old, dirty door covered in pieces of paper peeling up and bubbling this way and that.
Yeah, not romantic at all.
So, you want me honest opinion? It felt frustrating. I spent hours–HOURS, on this project. Hours every morning writing the list. Hours on the computer typing it out. Hours formatting it. Getting the paper. Printing. Gluing, planning, scheming. And none of it really turned out as planned.
And then, as I stood in the freezing cold barn gluing “that stupid list to that stupid barn for this stupid Christmas present” (my words, in my head) with Heidi next to me in her snow suit, whining about when I would please be done so we could go back inside, it struck me:
This is exactly what real love is like.
Almost 10 years of marriage has shown us this. That it rarely looks like a Hollywood scene. That the craft usually doesn’t work out, the plans never go as planned, child sp-nkings must even happen on Christmas day. We get sick and stuff happens and some days we just don’t feel like praising, don’t feel like loving.
And yesterday my parents celebrated 42 years of marriage and I bet that back on that day when my dad said those vows he didn’t think he’d be caretaker to his hot bride when she’s battling Parkinson’s and he does all the cooking, cleaning, scrubbing, EVERYTHING, and loves her through suffering and sometimes I want to scream–Why is this all so hard?
Why is love so hard?
And Shawna’s husband is grieving this Christmas and love for him meant walking through the cruelty of cancer. Walking all the way to the bitter end. To death.
This is love.
And so when the 1,000 things don’t add up and neither does life and we’re tempted to shout, I didn’t sign up for this! THIS, this isn’t the love that I signed up for!
That’s when we begin to truly love.
That’s where self ends and love begins and until then we’re just practicing for the real thing.
When we just stand there, tears streaming down our cheeks, and open our arms again and say:
“Here I am. Again. For you. All I am and all I have is yours.”
That’s love.
And we do sign up for it, for someone, because Christ signed up for it, for us.
Greater love has no one than this: That he lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13
{Growing with you. Thank you for reading.}
*You may notice I’m feeling rather broken this week. It’s a good thing. Remember Why brokenness is a blessing? And again I am happy, though, to pour out my brokenness and pray you are blessed by it in the form of another E-book, offered for FREE tomorrow in this place. Let In Light is for EVERYONE, not just moms. 31 days of TRUTH to start your New Year right. I pray you are blessed. Would you mind spreading the word for me? Thank you much!
Why it really does matter…
We talked here about poor Peter, who tripped up on the fear of man and found himself doing stupid stuff. We’ve all been there. But here is the sobering part of the story:
After Peter pulled away from the Gentiles and separated himself by only eating with Jews, Galatians 2:13 says the “rest of the Jews” and even Barnabas were “carried away” by Peter’s behavior.
Everyone followed Peter in this! This is why this is so dangerous.
This is why we must change.
This is why it really does matter.
All that we do affects others. Whether you feel like it or not, you are a leader.
Passages like this scare me – I blog, I write, I teach a lot. And no matter how much we love Jesus and are used by Him to spread the gospel, we are all vulnerable to the fear of man and hypocrisy. And it’s worth nothing that this happened to Peter even after Pentecost. Even after the supernatural indwelling by the Holy Spirit. No matter how spirit-filled and powerfully anointed we are by God, we are all susceptible to the fear of man and hypocrisy. We have to be on guard.
The question for us is, Who am I possibly “leading astray” by actions?
See, everything that we do “preaches” something, right? Remember we are the only Bibles some people will read.
While we wouldn’t dream of going around and knocking on people’s doors and preaching a false gospel to them, would we walk around living a false gospel for them?
The pure and true gospel message can be tarnished and polluted by our false living just as much as by our false teaching. Just as Paul was opposing the Judaizers who were false teach-ers, he was opposing hypocrites who were false live-ers.
Our simple guiding question: What does this action “preach” about my God? Does it validate the gospel or invalidate? Does it add weight and credibility to Christ’s message, or does it erode the beautiful foundation Jesus laid?
How am I helping or hindering the precious souls God has put in my path?
CS Lewis said it like this:
It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization–these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit–immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously–no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner–no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.
That’s why it really does matter. We’re helping everyone get somewhere. What does your life preach?
{Feeling the healthy weight of this with you … thanks for reading.}