The ocean waves are rolling, white caps turn lazily on the surface of the deep blue. My mind is taken up in captivity by God’s love and beauty as I stare into the sapphire sky, wispy clouds streak through the shades of blue. As the sun continues to rise, streams of yellow and pink pastels dance across and kiss the top of the ocean. The waves are calm and soothing, they simply roll over onto each other, relentlessly. They don’t stop, they just continue, and I can’t get enough of their beauty.
“You are brave, my daughter…”
“Yeah, You make me that way.”
I can’t help but let the song enter my head. I start to hum lightly as I reflect on the lyrics of the song “You make me brave” by Bethel. It’s final debrief and, quite frankly, everything is going in a whirlwind. I’m here, but I feel like I’m on the outside looking in. I still can’t believe that this life is the one He chose for me.
As I repeat the lyrics in my head, they start to form something in my soul.
“You make me brave
You make me brave
You call me out beyond the shore into the waves
You make me brave
You make me brave
No fear can hinder now the love that made a way
You make me brave
You make me brave
No fear can hinder now the promises you made
As your love, in wave after wave, crashes over me
I have heard You calling my name
I have heard the song of love that You sing
So I will let You draw me out beyond the shore
Into Your grace
Into Your grace
Champion of Heaven you made a way for all to enter in.”
The lyrics ring more true in my life at this moment than anything, even the waves rolling before my eyes seem less true than these words.
God has made me brave through this journey. I was brave before, but I was a “worldly” type of brave. Now I’m a Godly type of brave. The type of brave that isn’t conditional.
Everyone keeps telling me to prepare for questions as I return home. They keep telling me to prepare to tell people what I’ve learned and how God has changed me, revealed Himself. Truly, this overwhelmed me immensely because over the last year God has taught me so much and I’m not even sure all of it will ever be shared, not because I don’t want to, but because processing all of it and being able to form it into sentences may not be humanly possible for me. It has been that intense.
I was starting to let that fact burden me, for just a moment, because I realized that I want the real ness and the relationship and friendship that I found with God over the last year, I want everyone to find. I want Him to be THIS real for you too, because He IS real.
But in that, God comforted me, He calmed me, and He gave me a revelation. A revelation that doesn’t sum up the last year, but a revelation that I pray will inspire you to find your own form of how real God is.
You’ve loved me unconditionally and that love has made me brave.
God’s love, and my willingness to truly know that love, has made me brave. This year has been a whirlwind, but the truth of the matter is that God’s love is more powerful than anything and anyone in this world and in the spiritual world. His love is the glue that holds us together. His love is the foundation of the braveness that He places inside of us.
In each country I’ve experienced His love in different and miraculous ways but I didn’t truly grasp the concept of His love until two weeks ago. Ultimately, everything before that led up to this moment. Every hug, every smile, every testimony and tear, every hurt and pain…everything.
Every wall that I’ve built in myself, to protect myself, has slowly but surely been crashing down around me over the last year. And in letting the walls crumble, slowly, God started moving in, I mean truly, into the once closed off areas of my heart. As He moved, and as He took up more space on the couch of my heart, He began to reveal to me truly what love is.
For so long, I thought I had that one figured out. But as He showed me how I was loving I realized in a pain inducing moment that made my heart ache harder than it ever has, that my love has been selfish, conditional, and seeking. Of course, I never realized this until God opened the doors of my mind and truly revealed my judgmental heart to me. For years I thought this love was pure. And although it’s true that I love people fiercely and automatically, I realized that it was because I chose to love them. Some people, though, I pretended to love. When all the while I would judge them and put myself higher than them in my mind without even having a second thought. I realized that my love for them wasn’t really love. And that broke my heart.
No matter what, every person on this earth is God’s creation-the homeless man on the streets of LA, the surfer with dreads and a joint, the murderer on death row, and the middle class American Christian. He’s in love with the drug addict, the mega church pastor, and the sweet two year old playing with Barbies. No matter what shape, size, or mold that you fit-whether you believe in God or not-He still loves you-always has, always will, unconditionally, and our human brains will never fully understand why.
And, TRULY coming to this realization in my own life has broken my own heart for the lack of love that I’ve shown to this world. Like I said, yes I’ve loved well by the world’s standards, but by my Savior’s standards-the only ones that matter-I’ve missed the mark, failed the class, and my heart is being wrung dry for how I’ve failed Him.
But in His LOVING fashion, He’s bestowed grace upon me and revealed to me these things.
Over this last year He has made me brave. He has shown me what it means to truly love and to love bravely. To love especially when I don’t feel like it because where there’s love, there’s no room for hate, and where there’s no hate, there’s no evil. And although I know this world will never be completely void of evil-I’m going to try damn hard to make sure I do all I can to love you the way God loves you. Oh, my friend, it’s not an easy task-but neither was the cross on Calvary for Jesus.
