saved by love

photo credit: Vladimir Soares @vlad_soares

This week was an emotionally difficult week for me. You know that kind of week where your heart actually aches, where you can physically feel a deep pain, but you know it’s emotional and not one to be “worried” about.

January 6th would have been my dad’s 93rd birthday, and he has been gone for more years than any of us had him in our lives. His absence, while I don’t speak of it often, left a crater size hole in my heart and in our lives. He passed away suddenly just twenty-three days after his 59th birthday.

He literally was here at 2:00 that afternoon when I spoke to him on the phone and gone just a few hours later. Just like that. On a dime, life can be over and or completely changed, without any second chances for anything.

When I think of the influence he could have been for my sons and my nieces and nephews, the Godly male role model he could have been for all of them, and the rock we all could have used many times over through the years, my heart still aches over his absence.

What I wouldn’t give to see his smile, to hear him pray, and to see him sitting by the fireplace reading his old, heavily worn, and torn Bible, a vision and memory I pray I never forget. What I wouldn’t give to hear his Godly words of wisdom spoken over the other deep hurt I am experiencing this week, the rejection from my son.

January 7, 2022, marks a full year since my son Jacob and I have spoken, and it has been two years since I have seen him. His anger towards me resulted from a text message sent individually to all three of my sons after the January 6, 2020, nightmare at the Capitol.

A text with the best of intentions, sent from this place of knowing how quickly life can change (Remember, it was Jan. 6th, my dad’s birthday, and I was remembering him and his abrupt death). A text interpreted with grace by two, and a text that spurred anger, resentment, and perceived judgment by the other.

I assumed all three boys knew my heart and knew my intentions because I thought they all knew me. Take my advice, my lesson learned here? Intentions, deep concern, and love are not always conveyed well electronically. If you need to say something important to someone, do not send it through email, and most definitely not through a text. Have that conversation live, no matter how hard it might be. Hopefully, at least then, if the person loves you, you stand a greater chance of being able to clarify your intentions if you are in person. It’s often easier to detach ourselves and assume the worst of someone when they aren’t “live” in front of us or on the phone.

Friends and family who know of the situation between my son and me frequently ask how I am handling it because they know this mama’s heart hurts. My heart aches for restoration with my son. It’s a deep, deep wound, I won’t lie, but I had to learn a long time ago, and was reminded again this week, that I cannot, and we should not put faith or hope in any earthly human for a perfect love.

People, family, spouses, friends, and yes, even our children can or likely will let us down, break our hearts, and perhaps even separate from us, and it can be for a variety reasons, some real or some assumed, but if our soul’s main nourishment is only fed by human love we will find ourselves unable to function and go on because the hurt is so deep.

If we are not anchored to a love that is steadfast in all kinds of weather, when we are our best and when we are our worst, then when someone we love cuts us out of their life, we will drown in the pain of the loss of that love.

I had to learn this lesson for myself, more than once. There were times in my life where I put so much faith and hope into people and their love that I crashed and burned when they walked away. In fact, just this week because of the two previously mentioned notable dates, particularly the year “anniversary” since I last spoke to my son, I started to slip into a dark place.

One night this past week, when I went to bed, I felt a very deep sadness consuming me. A darkness that wanted to take me under, to steal my joy for life and all the good things I do still have in my life. But then Jesus…like the faithful rock and anchor that He is, He spoke to me the way that He knows speaks to my heart.

He put a song on my heart and in my head that woke me up from a deep slumber, a song I have not listened to in years. He reminded me that I am saved by love, His love, a perfect love that is never going to leave me or reject me.

(Amy Grant-Saved by Love)

There's nothing quite like my family's love to warm me,
And nothing short of death's gonna ever leave me cold.
Well, still at times it's lonely,
But through it all it only
Makes me love Jesus more,
And this is what He came here for.

I can't imagine ever leaving now.
Now that I've been saved by love,
Saved by love, saved by love.
He's gone and turned my crazy world back around,
And I've been saved by love,
Saved by love, saved by love.
I know that I've been saved by love,
Saved by love, saved by love

Oh, I'm never leaving now,
Now that I've been saved by love,

This song reminded me of the past when I was so broken and lost, but Jesus loved me too much to leave me there. He loved me in spite of my sins, my wounds, and my brokenness. He reminded me that just as I am not capable of perfect love, neither are others. If we were, He would not have needed to die for us. We are to look to Him for real love, a love that is deeper than any love from any human, and a love that will always comfort us and give us peace in all things. We are not to seek that from this world.

This is a fallen world, and we will never find that kind of sustaining love anywhere from anyone here, nor can we give it to anyone. I think that might be why this quote resonates so deeply with me.

"The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves." ~ Victor Hugo

This quote sums up my prayer of thanksgiving almost every single day,” God, THANK YOU, for loving me in spite of myself!” I’m a sinner. I am like the apostle Paul who knows what is right and what he ought to do, and yet I do what I know is wrong. The spirit is willing, but the flesh…Time and time again I mess up and fall short, but Jesus loves me anyway because He knows my heart. I am saved by love, His all-consuming, perfect love.

Sadly, most of us do not operate from this same mindset of unconditional love, and this is why we cannot look to humans for a love to sustain us in all ways and in all things. We often don’t assume the best of others, even those we know and love, nor do others always assume the best of us, and it’s no surprise.

This world and its view and interpretation of love is so incredibly skewed. It’s no wonder people can just write others off or walk away so easily. The world tells us, we have the right to this or that, that we are entitled to say whatever we want because we are being true to ourselves, we’re just being our authentic self, who cares who is hurt in the fallout. That is not our problem.

And yet, it is obvious that love, real authentic love is something we all deeply desire, are searching for, and seeking the meaning of. Just look at the shelves in bookstores, all the magazines, on-line resources, and all the talk shows dedicated to the topic of love.

The Greeks have four different words to describe different types of love.
Phileo is the bond of friendship.
Eros is sensual love, or romantic love. It’s a love stimulated by our senses.
Storge, a natural love felt between family members, or a bond of empathy.
Agape love is a pure, unconditional love expressed through chosen action(s)

We Christians believe that Agape love is the highest form of love, and it is the love that Jesus has for mankind. Agape love is feeling so much love for someone else that you put them before yourself. (this of course assumes a healthy relationship, not abuse or co-dependency)

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

Agape love is always shown by what it does. God’s love is displayed most clearly at the cross. This is the ULTIMATE example of agape love. The cross is how we all have been Saved by Love!

Society today believes that love is disposable, it’s a 2 a.m. text message from someone telling them how lonely they are and wanting them to “connect,” also known as a “booty call.” Society says a hookup or one night stand is love. Our world today tells us that love is something that is selfish and satisfies our needs, our desires.

The kind of love we are to strive for is agape love, a love that is unconditional and is always shown by what it does, it does not come naturally to us, and we are incapable of producing such a love without Jesus. He is the source.

This is why our world today is so confused about authentic love and rejects the gospel that tells us to be selfless. The world cannot wrap its mind around something that tells us to put self behind others, behind our wants or needs, or that our desires should be behind those we love.

Agape love involves faithfulness, commitment, and an act of the will. It is distinguished from the other types of love by its lofty moral nature and strong character.

Agape love is beautifully described in 1 Corinthians 1-13.

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now, we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

The more life I live, trying to make three blended families, plus our extended families “work,” especially around the holidays, I am learning more and more the depth of the meaning of Paul’s writing above. It takes Jesus in us to live undivided and to extend supernatural grace to others.

Corinthians is agape love spelled out for us, and I can attest to the difficulty of living this way, and how as humans, it requires so many things that we do not come by naturally and without Jesus walking with us, we will fail and fail miserably, and like the Corinthians, if we don’t remember Jesus, who has saved us all by His love for us, whose blood was shed on the cross for all of us, we will live divided, not just in our communities, but in our homes as well.

To love as Christ has called us to love, and to be a more loving person, we cannot live by the empty and self-gratifying definition of love that our messed-up world wants to give us. The love this world offers will leave us empty and unsatisfied, and in dark times we will be pulled under.

We have our example of agape love in Jesus, and we need His spirit in order to practice a love like His. The only way we can know it is through spending time with Him, in His word. He is my example of the kind of love He expects me to offer my son when we are reunited again.

Jesus paid the price for all of us, my son, myself, everyone. We are all saved by Love.

Tying it all together: My heart breaks for the separation from my son, but Jesus is my ultimate source of love. His perfect, unfailing, and anchored love will sustain me always, especially in dark days like this week. He reminds my hurting heart the He knows exactly how I feel because I too have been a prodigal. I have demanded my way and excluded Him before and yet, He continues to love me in spite of myself.

Extra reading material: John Piper-the-link-between-gods-love-for-us-and-ours-for-others

biblical-love-and-codependency

around the table

looking behind to see ahead