Joshua 1:9 “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
God is always there, He is always present but I have been walking in fear and anxiety for weeks now. I question my decisions, I question God and in that I find deep hurt and rigorous suffering.
However, even in my struggle to find God in some of my deepest fears and anxieties, He has been clearly teaching me lessons that will guide the next chapter of my life on the Race.
My most current struggle is in idolizing my earthly relationships to a point of co-dependency. I attempt to find comfort in people and look for validation hoping that their approval of me will somehow calm my anxieties. I look for love and peace in community and have grown impatient by the lack of response. But, in the midst of this pursuit, I am losing sight of what this is all about, who this is for and why I started this journey to begin with. God. It is all about Him but rather than looking for the Lord to calm my storm, I look for other people to love me more, to give me more of their time, to give me MORE and the truth is, I am not entitled to that.
We are called to love and to be loved but searching for Christ-like love in places where God doesn’t dwell is a nearly impossible quest. I can show others the love of Christ and hope that they come to know Him, but it is not my job to be their God.
People often tell me that I have the gift of empathy and maybe I do but most of the time it feels like a burden or an unbearable weight. The best way that I know how to love is to stand with people in their suffering and to walk with them through it. However, so often when that weight is crushing me, I only hope for someone to love me that way. To stand with me, to acknowledge me, to love me unconditionally and to walk with me through it all but I often come up feeling discouraged or the world falls short own my expectations and I forget that God can offer me that.
I often ask myself why it hurts so much to love people so fiercely and them being incapable of loving you the same in return and why I continue to put myself through that. But isn’t that what Jesus does? Jesus loves us relentlessly with the clear knowledge that we may never love Him in return. But the incredible part? He loves us anyway.
Maybe this is the journey God is calling me to or the lesson God is teaching me. To love without permission. To love without limits. To love without boundaries. To love so hard that it hurts. But also, maybe God’s hand in that is teaching me what it means to love Him while more importantly loving people with a Christ-like love. To love people knowing that they may never be capable of loving me to the same magnitude in return.
God’s love will never ever disappoint. I lost sight of that. In my desire to find meaningful love in my relationships, I lost track of God’s unconditional love. I got discouraged and distracted by the worldly response to love: a lack of trust and the presence of fear and anxiety at the mere possibility that love so strong really exists and that we can experience it. But, it does and we can. God’s love is more powerful, more encapsulating, more relentless, more present, more faithful, more selfless, more forgiving and more exquisite than any love we will ever experience. God loves us more in one moment than any human could in a lifetime. Maybe that is the lesson.
Love more, even when it comes with excruciating pain because that is what God wants; God wants us to love and to be loved. Be strong and courageous in your pursuit of love. Love without permission.
