Understanding Love.

The more I dig deeper into the true meaning of love, the more I realize how incomprehensible it is.

Love is something I’ve never understood fully.

I wrestle with the fact that God loves me – yes, me – even when I reject him. I can never love God perfectly; I am not even close. But every breath is a gift of love that we all receive, and every sin forgiven is one that Jesus so lovingly died for. And God gives us a glimpse of this type of love, not only through him but through others. It simply baffles me that I receive a perfect love from God and love from other people, as well. I see smaller pictures of God’s unconditional love when I see someone go out of their way to help me, or when someone shows incredible forgiveness and grace when they don’t have to. I deserve nothing. I deserve judgement for what I’ve done – and yet, I receive love instead. How can it be? How fortunate am I to receive the best gift their was ever given? To rest in the fact that even when the world seems against me, I still have more love given to me than I can comprehend?

I pray that every day I will be able to give little pieces of it back, not to earn it but to be actively grateful for the life I’ve been given.

Before I could truly start giving back love and encouragement that I believed in my heart, I had to understand it more for myself. I think the past 6 months or so have truly brought me along in this lesson. 

I’ve been slowly crawling out of a time where I had little forgiveness in my heart for the sins I struggled with the most. I became desperately angry with myself for a long time, but through the amazing grace of God he opened my eyes to how pointless it all was. I was being hurtful toward myself where I didn’t need to be, judging my own sin when the rightful judge is God himself.

That is an example of unconditional love: He gave me grace, through all of my sin, even when I couldn’t love myself.

And at first, learning to forgive myself and accept grace was different. Odd, almost. I had to start seeing myself in a different light – not as the person who was lost, but the person who has been found. I had to let go of the thinking that I was the one who should punish myself for every wrong deed and to believe that I was loved, forgiven, and made beautiful in God’s eyes. It made me understand love in a whole new way, to realize just how much more God gave grace to me, in a time where I felt utterly worthless.

And even now, where I feel miles farther from the sadness and sin that I was hiding in, still feels weird to me. To give someone love and feel it so much more instead of just a natural response. To WANT to encourage someone, because of how much I’ve been encouraged by my own salvation. It feels weird for me to say that I feel good about myself, or that I am more confident.

I want to leave you with one more thought, though: I am not here to say that I am worthy. I am not here to tell you that I deserve the world, that I am loved and enough and perfect. Because I still don’t necessarily believe that I am those things. What I do believe, though, is that I am forgiven. I am worthy because Christ was worthy. I am more confident in myself because there is a Savior who lives in me and through me. My power is nothing, Christ’s power is everything. I deserve death, he brings forth life. I have been lost, but He has found me and set me free.