I have always felt a deep, unmoving call to love and work
with the most vulnerable. And since the start of our marriage, my
husband and i together have shared that vision and felt that passion.
But the past couple years, as we've actually been DOING that - in relationships with people who are different than us, loving the hurting - it has been HARD.
Loving the vulnerable is HARD. But the past couple years, as we've actually been DOING that - in relationships with people who are different than us, loving the hurting - it has been HARD.
LOVING is hard. Period. It makes us vulnerable ourselves.
But even as I've experienced these low, sick, panicked days, God has graciously opened my blurry eyes to more of Himself.....and allowed me to experience just as many deep, peaceful, quiet moments of truth. I want to try to share some of those of truths, for those of you who might feel a lot like me some days (I'll attempt to be brief....):
* Remember grace. We don't deserve anything we have - our life, our salvation, our earthly
blessings - but because of His unmerited favor He has blessed us with
much. It is not up to me how much I have or how much others have. He has
made me who I am and given me what I have, by His grace. And I can look
to the example of Christ and live out His grace as He asks me: weeping
with those who mourn, sitting with the brokenhearted, using the
blessings and power He has given me to defend and advocate and show His
grace to those hurting and oppressed. As Paul said, "By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect." (1 Cor. 15:10)
* Remember the character of
our God. He is a God who loves us so deeply that He gave His own life
for us. He is a God who, in Christ, sought out the most broken,
messed-up, left out people and chose to sit with them. He chose
to laugh and eat and hang out with those who society had forgotten,
deemed as gross or too sinful or messed up. He loves us - each of us, in
our weirdest, most messed up, left out moments where we feel so unloved
and unaccepted by anyone else. As with the blind man in Luke 18, Jesus
ALWAYS comes back for those others leave behind. He ALWAYS comes when we
call. His heart is tender and compassionate towards us. And He is
POWERFUL - one look from Him and the most powerful men in His time were
silenced. No one dared touch anyone He defended. One sentence from Him
turned away the most powerful evil. This is our Savior, the God we can walk with and whose power we can share in today.
* Christ is love, and "love always hopes" (1 Cor. 13:7). As a visionary and a passionate idealist, i know sometimes people mistake this hope for naivety. But as hard as the past couple years have been at times, and even now as I am discouraged and heartbroken by people and things going around in the world around us, Christ whispers His truth to my heart: love ALWAYS hopes. In Him, all things are being made new and He is at work powerfully all around us, in us, and through us. He is POWERFUL and He wants to use US to be "Repairer of Broken Walls" (Is. 58:12). He wants to use US to remind this hurting, broken world that in His love, there is always HOPE. Never feel naive for believing this - it's the truth.
* Faithfulness. God calls us to faith-fullness. Not to change the world, not to see fruit in everything we touch or success (whatever that even looks like anyway) in all our efforts and relationships. I'm realizing, and still learning, each day is that what God calls us to is just to be faithful. Faithful to Him, to walking "a long obedience in the same direction." I'm understanding deep in my heart, more and more each day, that faith is not knowing God's plan. It is loving our Savior and choosing to walk with Him each day down his path, even if we don't know where it leads. No matter how hard it might be, or what He asks of us. He just asks us to be faithful, to follow Him - not to put the whole world on our shoulders and wear ourselves into the ground everyday trying to save it - instead He asks us to quietly walk with him and let Him take us "further up, further in" (CS Lewis), trusting His power and might to strengthen us along the way. As a dear friend (shout out to Lauren Zumbrun) recently wrote, "...having faith is not following a life that we understand, it is being present in the place we are in, trusting in our Creator, and having the capacity to love well despite what circumstances may be."
* Joy. Knowing Him is joy. And we are blessed to live life and breath each day and join His redemptive work in this world in whatever way He calls us to. No matter how discouraging or sad or heartbreaking some days might be. On those days I feel like I want to scream...when I feel the heartache of the world and my family and my friends and everything pressing down on me until I almost can't breathe...Something pulls me back. And either through the soft words of my husband, truth spoken by a friend, or seeing the glory of a sunset reflected on the water, He reminds me of the deep JOY that comes from knowing His holiness and walking with Him. It is in Him that we live and move and have our being. It is in Him that we can know true joy despite the darkness all around us, to have the freedom to laugh and run and dream and love without fear of that darkness ever truly reaching us. If it reaches us for a moment (or even for years), we have a hope that goes beyond those years.
* It's ok to cry and be heartbroken. I've experienced firsthand that it's possible to be anxious and sad while at the same time still believing in the ultimate hope of Christ. This is life. And in the moments we feel most anxious and sad, its important to be honest about this and vulnerable with people who can empathize, support, encourage, and even get us the more tangible help we might need as we go about doing God's work. A pastor friend of mine (shout out to John Carroll) recently described it beautifully this way: so many of us fall into the pattern of living our days just preparing for the "other shoe to drop" - fearing what might happen, doing all we can to prevent pain or disaster, and spending our time looking ahead in anxiety, missing all that God is doing now. But God never says that if we stress enough about tomorrow, hard times won't come. Instead, He promises to be there when the shoe inevitably will drop, walking with us and showing us more of Himself in those moments. He invites us to a new pattern - one where we live passionately, trusting Him in a deeper way. Where we have bad days and cry on His shoulder, but where we ultimately trust His presence to carry us through tomorrow, whatever it may bring - and live fully in Him today.
* It's hard to admit this, because I've genuinely had a very blessed
life - but I've realized the past couple years that even though I feel
called to help and defend the most hurting and vulnerable, I am hurting too. I am vulnerable too.
I need God's grace and mercy too. More than ever, just as much as the
people I feel called to help. The more I've felt God's love for others,
the more I've realized how broken and vulnerable I am.
And that's good - it doesn't mean I'm disqualified from doing what I
feel called to do; it's the opposite in fact. I've realized that the
more I understand my own hurt and sadness, and how much I need Someone
to help and defend me, the more my heart yearns to love and
defend others. My passion and calling only grows stronger. As Christ has
done for me, my heart yearns to do for others - to love as He first
loved me. And more than anything, to help others see the true Rescuer.So friends, as we go about our days, remember:
"He is before all things, and in him all things hold together....he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel." (Col. 1:17, 22)
