No one knows they suck at receiving love until they just know. That is just how it happens. As I anxiously waited to leave everything I knew behind for 9 months, it was the strangest thing to think about how I would be a completely different person when I’d return. It was strange, but it was comforting at the same time because I didn’t really know who I was. Who are you? Who do you want to be? Who did God create you to be? I think people go their entire life without really figuring out the answers to those questions and I refuse to be one of those people. So here I am, only 2 months into the journey of trying to figure out who I am and I already have the answer: I am LOVED.
3 months ago, at training camp, I met the Holy Spirit. (If you are thinking that it is crazy that I’ve called myself a Christian for 5 years and I’m just now getting to know the Holy Spirit, I’m right there with you, but that’s a whole other blog). One night in worship, we were invited to really ask the Holy Spirit to show up, and he did. As Racers around me sang the theme song of training camp, “Take me out to the middle of the river, I wanna drown in the good ol’ river of Your love,” I got this picture of myself in open-heart surgery. I was looking down at my chest wide open and the river of the Father’s love was pouring into my heart. I kept waiting for it to stop flowing, but it never did. I felt the immensity of His love for me for the first time.
Throughout the week of training camp, I struggled with feeling as though there was something missing in my relationship with God as I looked around and saw people experience and worship Him with a kind of freedom I’ve never known. The picture of me in open-heart surgery revealed that God’s love for me was what was missing. As I realized in that moment that my relationship with God was based more on dos and don’ts than love, I thought that was that- now I know. I thought that one experience was all I needed. I thought I would be changed forever; now I would feel the love God has for me all the time. But when I went home and told my family and friends about my experience and they told me I was different, I didn’t feel different. The picture didn’t last. Fast forward to the first couple weeks of life in the Philippines. As we would worship together as a squad, I felt empty. Why couldn’t I just be free in the Father’s love as so many of my squad mates were? The answer came to me gradually, through so many little things God made happen: I suck at receiving love. There wasn’t a problem with God’s love for me. He has loved me wholly and perfectly all the days of my life and He will continue to love me that way for the rest of my days because He chose to love me and His love is constant. The problem was my ability to receive that love. Life is hard and people aren’t perfect, so the way I’ve been loved by people has been flawed. People don’t always choose to love the entirety of a person. People will choose to love the good and reject the bad they see in you. The reality of that had hardened my heart to the point of being unwilling to accept love from people. And I’ve realized I put the love of people and the love of God in the same category, so without even knowing it, I refused to receive a perfect love.
As I’ve processed through this, I’ve realized that this isn’t the kind of thing that can be fixed with one supernatural experience of feeling God’s love because people will never be able to love me perfectly. The ability to receive love, both from people and from God, is probably something I will struggle with my whole life. But the good news is that God doesn’t suck like the rest of us do, so His love doesn’t change even if I don’t accept it. Whether I choose to receive it or not, the answer to the question, “Who am I?” is in His love. The answer to the question, “Who did God create you to be?” is in His love. Loved by the most high King is who I am and who I was created to be. The answer to those questions doesn’t lie in a career or a passion or a location to live in, it lies solely in God’s love. Loved is my identity. And because I know now that is who I am, I will choose open-heart surgery every day.
