Love “… and we trust that love.”

#2.

1 John 4: 16 – “And so we know the love that God has for us, and we trust that love.”

I am about to get vulnerable – this is a scary thing for me. I’m about to go where I’ve never gone before with you. Please put on your gloves.

I continually get frustrated with myself and relationships. Not all of them. See, I’m fairly decent at them- even though I don’t have a lot that are deep. I have enough. I have a small, intimate circle of friends and a lot of individuals that I pass by on a daily basis and thoroughly enjoy being around.

But there are two that matter most that I cannot get to the place I want to – and I don’t know why. My husband. My God. I long for deeper and deeper relationships – the ones that you can’t cut through even with the world’s most powerful laser. The ones that you wake up every morning excited about, to a point where I am racing to spend time with them. Not racing because there is so much to do that day – racing because they are that important to me, and emotionally I am filled.

The hubs and I? We’re working on it. We love each other and I can feel that love growing the more we actually spend time getting to know each other more and realizing that the moment we feel “comfortable” and “safe” with what we have, thinking we don’t need to continue to work at this thing called love and marriage – we’re in jeopardy of backsliding and complacency.

God and I? Also a work in progress. I want to be so on fire, to have this crazy love that I read about. The passion that I listen to when I hear others speak. I long for it. I think (scream), “WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?” Do I not read enough? Do I not ‘get it’? What am I doing wrong?

Why is this not a natural thing for me? Why, when I finally start to get just past the surface, do I emotionally stop? I don’t know. I can’t be sure, but I do know when I read that verse. I stopped. “… and we trust that love.” Do I really trust that God loves me? Do I really, truly, without a shadow of a doubt, fully know and understand this phrase I’ve heard since I was oh, zero years old? “God’s love.” And if I really truly know it and live it – do I trust it? I don’t know. Can I fully say it? Not sure. I want to. Oh how I want to. I long to. I desire to. Hmmm… I started to type, “There is honestly nothing more than I desire than this.” And then backspaced – I thought about my family and backspaced. What does that mean? Do I trust God and His complete love with my family?

I’ve been reading a lot of Max Lucado. If you don’t know him or his work – go check him out, today. He writes like nobody else, he puts things into context that I’ve never before seen. It’s amazing. I picked up an old book of his that I had purchased and read in college. It’s kind of funny because the things I highlighted, I knew instantly when I read it first many years ago. I hadn’t even remembered when exactly I bought it until I saw what I had marked. But it is a book that documents that miracles Jesus performed – “He Still Moves Stones.” I’m more than halfway through this book and for some reason what I’ve read 100 times on the back cover actually made sense to me this time – He still does work miracles. Today. This is not a history lesson on a God (oooh, ahhh, so high up in the sky). It’s about the character of God. The New Testament stories are not to show us who Jesus was and what He did, but who He is and what he does.

Tell me this – if you do not truly know someone inside and out and trust their character, can you trust them with those things that are most precious to you? Huh. We’ve all heard, “I love you.” Many times we’ve been hurt by those three words. Someone has said those words to us and walked out the door into the hands of another woman or man. Some people have heard those words after being bruised and bloodied by the same hands that are supposed to guide and protect them. It’s in songs on the radio, shows on the television – and the depiction of that “love” that they speak of? Mmmmm, leaves a lot to be desired. With so many other frames of reference of this “love” that we are bombarded with – when someone tells us that do we trust that love? Interesting.

I don’t have it completely figured out. But one thing I realize now, I have to keep searching. To give up and accept status quo will not work. It will not work in my marriage, it will not work in my faith. But I do think that maybe a start is to continue to understand the character of God, He isn’t ashamed to show me. He has nothing to hide. It’s kind of like dating, getting to know one another, falling in love, THEN getting married – and then continuing to get to know one another. It’s a start.