Thursday, August 29, 2019

Loved to Loveliness

"Jared! Look!" I run up to my now-husband on our trip home from our honeymoon. I point to the Scripture I had just distanced myself to read. Matthew 4, the wilderness... post-baptism.


"Look, Jared!" I say again, as if he hadn't heard my previous shrieks in a public airport. "The Father told Jesus that he was his beloved son before he went into the wilderness! These were the words that were tested! This is what Jesus knew was true of him! That is how he defeated the enemy!"


Somehow in that moment I knew exactly what I was saying. After a clear and miraculous demonstration of love that was just showered on me, I knew deep down where I was headed next: the wilderness. And I knew that no matter how much I thought I knew I was loved now, that truth was going to be tested. But I also knew that truth would be exactly what I would need to make it through a dry season. And I was right.


It has been a sly trick of the enemy to attempt to convince me that I'm loved because I'm lovely, rather than the other way around. I didn't know how easy it would be to see pictures of myself in a wedding gown and feel pressure to always be that beautiful, lest my husband's eye for me start to wander. I didn't know how simple it would be to start letting his compliments regarding my heart for others turn into a rubric for how I must continue to look like a Proverbs 31 woman. I didn't know how much the lie had seeped into me that the love I'd been shown by him was actually something I had somehow earned and therefore would need maintenance to be up kept. And I certainly didn't know how much any belief in those lies would perpetuate the very thing I feared in the first place: looking and acting ugly


Anxious striving and performing--like a tumbleweed of never-going-to-be-good enough works that are blown away by the wind. And yet I keep chasing them down to try and prove myself to be as valuable as I felt when I was in the center of what I assumed to be God's will. And, yes, my time at Micah was certainly God's will for me, but so is this. This time of letting the 'my beloved' words get rooted in me without a stack of reasons I can cling onto for why I somehow deserve to be. The words that remind me of who I am. My new, unearned identity: his.


For some reason, though, those aren't the words I think I want to hear most of the time, because trusting those words means trusting someone outside of me. Trusting someone else's love. A love I can't control. And so I find that I would rather be the one loving, not the one needing. Need scares me. It's vulnerable. And most of the time, I don't like it. What girl wants to be thought of as 'needy'? Who could love a girl like that? But as much as I want to be in a place where I'm not rushing my husband to the urgent care because I slice my finger open when I try to cook. Or in a place where my house is no longer overrun by kids to take care of, but rather where I'm the one curled up in a ball and being cared for. Or where I find myself in a puddle of tears because even though my head knows the truth my heart is taking some time to catch up... But that's exactly where I find myself. And when I'm at my utter worst I also find myself wanting to go home, because I wonder if I'm really wanted in this one. Because I wonder if who I am is not enough. But when I believe that? I'm not trusting my husband. I'm not trusting his promise. And I not only hurt me, but him. And yet, even in the moments where my mistrust has turned into swords, Jared has still looked me in the eye and spoken all those lies away. He has given me his word... I just need to believe him--that I'm wanted, in our home--and, by God's grace, I do.


No, home isn't Honduras anymore. But neither is it is here in St. Louis. Or in the States at all, for that matter. Not really. Home has now become for me where my husband is. Home is where my heart is at rest with my husband's deep assurance that I'm loved by him. Not because I'm lovely, but rather, because his love for me is bigger than me, bigger than us. That the marriage promise really is safe. No outs. And thankfully, believing that is true puts my heart in the place where I become the wife I want to be for him: lovely. And that belief brings me to the place where I can finally love again, just like I've been loved: freely and fully. 


Yes, I've seen the Lord's love in a beautiful, raw, and vulnerable way through my husband here on earth--especially when I feel most unlovable. But, as wonderful as Jared is, his love has only been an imperfect glimpse. Though our marriage here on earth is a promise to be kept, as broken human beings we won't live into our vows perfectly. In the end, our confidence can't come from each other or we'll fall every time the other does. And, aside from that, our marriage here has an expiration date. One of us will inevitably feel the weight of that 'til death do us part' one day. But that doesn't mean our love and our hope are coming to an end. Because our hope for home isn't ultimately based in each other. We have a true Home that's coming through a marriage that is built for forever. Our true Husband has promised to love us--his bride, the church. A love that is free from fear that death will ever again part us. One day our Husband will bring both our hearts to the place where they are always truly safe: with Him. And we will never, ever have to believe the lie again that we have somehow earned his love. I don't want to play the game of eternal love-maintenance, and thankfully we won't have to... when we are finally fully lovely, because we are beholding the face of the loveliest Husband we could ever imagine: Jesus.





For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.


And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven...


Colossians 1:19-23

A Cup of Water

For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward. Mark 9:41 ...