All You Need Is Love, Love Is All You Need

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Love is an amazing thing. Not the Taylor Swift, teenage emotion kind of love that wanes and fades with time or distraction, or even the exhilarating but fleeting emotion of crush (Bowie & Elliot style, yeah!) but God's love, pouring out from His side, pooling crimson red at His feet for us, and the love He pours into our hearts for others, that His goodness might be shared.

I've been thinking a lot about love recently, mostly because I find myself in love. Yep, I'm in love, with the most awesome man I've ever known, who is so good to me, and can only be described as God's blessing and gift in my life. All this mushy-gooshy lovey-doveyness has got me to thinking about how incapable of showing real love I really am. The other night, as I was driving home from one of our dinner dates, where he had presented me with an undeserved little token of his affection (aka GORGEOUS Anthro scarf), I broke down in tears realizing that no matter how hard I try, I will never be as good to this man as he is to me, or as God is to me through him, because I am completely incapable of an unselfish kind of love. Fears of not being able to love him deeply enough haunt me.

There on Highway 169, driving home through a haze of mascara runny tears, I prayed to my Father, asking Him to grow in me the kind of love that someone as amazing as my man deserves, the kind of love that is an outpouring of His own true love in my life. And He answered me back so faithfully, reminding me of James 1:17, that "every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." Yes, C is God's gift in my life, but even more than that, He is a gift from my Heavenly Father, who rules the heavenly lights, and owns the whole universe to give away at His disposal. My Father is ever steadfast, constant and true, and because He loves me and graces me with a merit I have never earned, He has given me a token of His own beautiful affection in the love of this kind and giving man. It's an earthly love that reminds me of a perfect, heavenly love.

Today I was reading Kisses From Katie, which I haven't done in a long time, and I broke down sobbing in my chair (are we sensing a trend?), because beautiful, caring Katie wrote so eloquently, once again, about God's love in her life, and her near obligation to let that love pour of our her into the many lives that God sends her way. In case you haven't read it yet, her Good Friday posting was wildly stirring in it's humility and gratitude. Here is a young woman that is wholly surrendered to His will, crazy and unpredictable and scary as it may be sometimes. And the reason why she allows herself to live a life many of us couldn't even imagine, well, it's all about love. His love for her, and the love that overflows into the lives she comes into contact with everyday. She said it in one of her posts, that when she's scared of what God's unpredictable will for her life might be, she remembers that perfect love casts out all fear.

Reflecting on all the ways we can show love to the people around us, as a mirror reflection of the God who first showed us love, can be a bit mind-blowing. I know at times I cannot comprehend it, nor even figure out how to do it. I want to love the fantastic man that God has put into my life with every last ounce of love that I can give, and in God's perfect, unselfish, giving way. This is the way he has been loving me, and one of the characteristics that I fell so in love with is the fact that he is so open about expressing his love, his support and his care for me. He shows me God's love for me in human form almost every day.

Christ Himself, fully God, yet humbled to the point of being a pathetic human, showed that love when He bled and died for us. He showed it when he, bent over with pain and the weight of the sins of the world, carried that massive cross to Calvary. He showed it when He spoke not a word, but meekly let Himself be led to the slaughter, soldiers and citizens alike mocking and humiliating Him. He showed it when He exhaled that final breath, weak from the torture He endured, heartbroken from separation from God, the natural consequence of fully bearing our sin, yet strong in grace, endurance, courage and love. That love cost Him everything, and bought me my freedom. That love set the bar for all love before and after it, every love there ever would be.

Grace, Endurance, Courage and Love. Faith, Hope and Love. And the greatest of these is Love. Love is what Christ has perfectly modeled for me. Love is what I want to give back to the world, to the hurting and unloved children, and to the man that God has blessed my life with. I'm no Katie Davis, but I know that I don't need to be. I need to be me, TrK, and to find my own path to love the way He wants me to. Only in His love, and through His strength will I ever be able to do that. And though I am scared at the prospect of all the ways that He can do that, I embrace it to. For what else do we need, but love? Love is all you need.