What does love look like?

Can I just be honest? It's been a hard couple of weeks. I feel like I've been wading into a deeper part of the waters. You know those seasons of your life, where you can FEEL the labor pains? The baby is coming but hasn't arrived. And you know deep in your heart that the "momentary light afflictions" are for an ETERNAL purpose, BUT in the moment you don't feel strong enough to hold onto that truth... Perhaps you feel more pressure than joy as you dive deeper.

Let me explain in more detail...

God is leading me into an unfamiliar territory of womanhood.  Amidst a few intense conversations with Ryan, my boyfriend, I realize how little I understand what it means to be a woman in a relationship with a man. I honestly think when Ryan and I started dating (over a year ago), I thought had this whole thing figured out. I lived as if I "knew" how to be a good girlfriend and what I "deserved." I hate admitting this, but I really think I neglected my NEED for Christ to know how to be a girlfriend, to love Ryan and ultimately to give him the respect he deserves... Well, last week, the Holy Spirit touched my eyes. So gently he revealed parts of my heart that humbled me to tears. I realized how much I hate being wrong and how quickly I am to blame Ryan instead of humbly validating his emotions, feelings and heart. I realized that I have so many expectations on who Ryan should be... Not that I am giving him an excuse to be less of a man that God desires for me, but instead of encouraging him toward life, my responses would often be filled with disappointment and frustration, confirming in his heart that he was deeply failing me. I realized that sometimes I use my emotions and my legitimate needs to manipulate him, with the unhealthy and wrong motivation to control our relationship... And on top of all these things (or maybe underneath), the Holy Spirit revealed my deep fears and insecurities. Rejection, being a disappointment, being too much. Does he really love me? Is his love genuine?

In the first days of realizing my need for wisdom in learning to better love and respect Ryan, I listened to a sermon called Marriage and Women by Mark Driscoll, the pastor of the church we are attending.  It was one of the many in a series on the book of first Peter. You may know the verses by heart... but for everyone's reminding:

    Wives and Husbands
    1Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, 2when they see your respectful and pure conduct. 3Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— 4but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. 5For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, 6as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.
    7Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

I highlight verse 4 because my heart deeply desires to be a woman whose beauty and love is rooted in a gentle and quiet spirit. However, in my everyday living, I struggle with anxiety and what I like to call craziness. Seemingly uncontrollable emotions, swinging back and forth between truth and lies. But this is not how I want to live. I long to be the woman who is marked by this gentle and quiet spirit. To me, this woman is marked by maturity, intimacy with Christ, and a proper understanding of who she is in relation to God and the people around her. All of these things produce in a woman the ability to live and love gently. For me, I long to be the passionate woman I am rooted in gentleness. Able to love with gentleness, speak truth with gentleness and even correct with gentleness. I long to be a woman who is so aware of the Holy Spirit dancing around her, guiding her with words of wisdom and truth. A woman whose heart is not tormented by fear, anxiety and control, but peace and trust in Christ. A woman who is rooted and established in Christ's love. That nothing could shake her. And the only love that truly sustains her is the Father's.

I wish I could say my pursuit of a gentle and quiet spirit has been successful these past couple of weeks. But I'm not there yet. And I am aware of the echoes of disappointment in my heart since I haven't yet arrived. Even last night, I found myself questioning Ryan's love for me. And two nights ago, I felt so tormented in my sleep as I wrestled with the Father about His love for me. Instead of simply dropping peace into my heart (my preferred method), he revealed deeper areas of my heart and past that need healing. He showed me how I had stopped trusting Him and stopped believing that He was still at work in my heart. At one point I even admitted to Ryan (he was on the phone with me) and God that I felt like the Holy Spirit was holding out on his end of the deal. I cried, "I have prayed and pursued and read the word and it's HIS job to bear fruit in me... but I still DON'T have peace. What am I doing wrong? And where are YOU, God? "

And somehow in His perfect timing, He partly answered me today. Last night was another one of restless sleep, but this morning He met me on my drive into work. One of the things I know God created me to do, a place where I encounter His spirit and the most peace I've ever experienced, is worship, prayer and intentional pursuit of intimacy with the Father. As a new Misty Edward's song played through my speakers, God gave me the ears to REALLY hear His voice in the lyrics. You should go to iTunes and download the entire album right now. The song I was specifically listening to was Arms Wide Open. Here are the lyrics.

    "What does love look like?" is the question I've been pondering
    What does love look like?
    "What does love look like?" is the question I've been asking of You

    I once believed that love was romance just a chance
    I even thought that love was for the lucky and the beautiful
    I once believed that love was a momentary bliss but love is more than this

    If all You ever wanted was my attention, all You ever wanted was love from me
    all you ever wanted was my affections, to sit here at Your feet...
    Then tell me

    "What does love look like?" is the question I've been pondering
    What does love look like if all of life comes down to love
    Then tell me what does love look like
    is the question I've been pondering
    "What does love look like?"

    Then I sat down a little frustrated and confused
    if all of life comes down to love
    then love has to be more than sentiment
    more than selfishness and selfish gain

    Then I saw Him there, hanging on a tree, looking at me
    I saw Him there hanging on a tree looking at me
    He was looking at me looking at him, staring through me
    I could not escape those beautiful eyes
    And I began to weep and weep

    He had arms wide open, a heart exposed
    arms wide open
    he was bleeding, bleeding
    arms wide opened, a heart exposed
    arms wide open
    He was bleeding, bleeding

    Love's definition was looking at me
    Looking at Him hanging on a tree
    I began to weep and weep and weep

    This is how I know what love is
    This is how I know what love is

    As I sat there weeping, crying
    Those beautiful eyes full of desire and love and he said to me

    You shall love me
    You shall love me
    You shall love me

    You shall love with
    arms wide open, a heart exposed
    with arms wide open, bleeding, sometimes bleeding

    He said, you shall love me with
    arms wide open, a heart exposed
    with arms wide open, bleeding, sometimes bleeding

    If anyone's looking for love in all the wrong places
    If you've been searching for love
    Come to me, take up your cross
    Deny yourself forget your father's house and run with me
    Because you were made for abandonment wholeheartedness
    You were made for someone greater someone greater
    So follow me; you'll come alive when you learn to die

    You shall love me, you shall love with
    arms wide open, a heart exposed
    with arms wide open bleeding, sometimes bleeding

Did you get that? We shall LOVE with arms wide open, a heart exposed, with arms wide open, bleeding, sometimes bleeding.  We are to love like Christ: Arms open - in surrender of our own strength and to the Father's will, our hearts exposed - honest and uncensored - in all of our weakness and imperfection, unafraid and unashamed of our deep longing, with arms wide open bleeding, sometimes bleeding - (this conjurs up so many ideas) running desperately after Him through trenches, messy in our failures and weaknesses, our emotions, confessions, with sin still inhabiting our human bodies, with a life that is a living sacrifice giving of all that we are even unto death.

This message of loving and being loved by Christ reminds me of one which IHOP preaches so fervently... I am dark, but lovely. Even in my weakness, I am lovely. Your weak love matters. (The Song of Solomon). The lyrics of this song reflected so much of my honest but extremely weak and messy pursuit of God and the Holy Spirit this past week. I am so struck by the fact that he would accept my weak love, even my self-focused pursuit of his heart. I love this woman's honest and very human pursuit of love. The recognition of the definition of love according to the world. Her frustration and wrestle to understand. It stirs my heart with a hunger to encounter Jesus in the way she did to write this song. I am clearly reminded that truly understanding and experiencing God's love is born out of simply being and sitting with the Father. So tonight, that is my prayer. Capture my attention, Jesus. Give me doves eyes, focused on you. I trust you. Keep teaching me to love like you. To live like you. To be the woman of love and peace I know you have made me to be.

To preface my upcoming blogs...

I need to write. Really. Not for anyone who may be reading, but for myself. My heart. And honestly, my brain. I've been walking on quite a road for the past several months and I have arrived at the point of realizing my desperate need to express myself verbally. Writing, words, thoughts, dreams... they're how I live and especially how I love. I'll be honest, I LOVE verbally telling someone how much I love them - in a card, over coffee, through a text or email, I'll even grab you by the cheeks and tell you how much Jesus loves you, if you let me... I don't know why, but my HEART gets so much fulfillment in giving away words. And then there are the other words. My 'deep thoughts', the questions I have about life, the passions I am pursuing, my frustrations and pain, my honest and uncensored walk with Jesus. I NEED to verbalize these thoughts... And I haven't been. But I have to try. Even if it's for the sake of a few more restful hours of sleep at night... (Though I know the results will go beyond this desire!)

Anyway, I thought I'd begin by sharing a blog I recently read from a Pastor's blog that I frequent. I have several pastors' blogs feeding into my Google reader, but now most blog posts sit marked as unread. Except one, Jason Holdridge. He's raw. He's real. He's SO HONEST. He's spilled his guts online - joy, pain, family, solitude, pursuit of God, distance from Him. I love his uncensored way because I can relate to his "human/new creation" relationship with the Father. People like him give me courage to write even more honestly. I'm thankful for this man and his words.

Usually I would simply provide my readers with a link to the corresponding webpage, but instead I'm going to paste the entire blog post here. For your convenience and mostly because I want you to read his thoughts. I need you to read this post. I long to be honest and live with uncensored words too. And I'm going to attempt to here. I pray that my words would not cause harm, fear of distress to you, but that you would come along side me in this narrow road we travel on, pray that God would give me courage to write and enable me to truly know Him better through this experience... Thank you!

"I didn't have the heart to tell them." - Jason Holdridge

I heard someone say this the other day and for some reason it just lingered inside my head the whole night. I made a mental note of it and went on with my life. But over the course of the last several days I feel like I've heard it a couple more times in different contexts of humanity.

It takes heart to share certain things with certain people. I think it's easy to just glide through life taking the path of least resistance with the convoluted motto: "The safest place to be is in the center of God's will". A motto I've found to be so misleading it makes me want to vomit. I think the most dangerous place to be is in the center of God's will. Climb into God's will and you'll experience butterflies and battlefields like never before. You'll be called upon to do the unthinkable. You'll undergo a gauntlet of misunderstandings. And above all, you'll be asked by God to muster the pluck (heart) to tell people things that are unnatural to say out loud.

It reminds me of what Jesus told Peter just before he took off and went to sit at the right hand of his Daddy, "You used to be able to dress yourself and go where you wanted to go, but now someone else will dress you and you will go where you don't want to go." A very interesting bit of enlightenment from the Messiah as to the rigors of discipleship. Namely, "you are in for a counter-intuitive" Jesus-journey. You will be asked to do things that any thinking human being would intelligently decline. You will be taken to places that will crucify you upside down. You will be invited to join Jesus in proclaiming his upside-down, inside-out Kingdom message...a message that, frankly, people will feel uncomfortable with. They will kick against the goads. Heck, we will kick against the same goads on days wondering if their is any other way -- "let this cup pass from me"?

Sometimes I struggle to have the heart to tell people what they desperately need to hear. I'm scared of their reaction. I'm wondering if it will sound maudlin and sappy. I'm scared to tell my wife what's bothering me. I'm fearful that my dad wouldn't understand. I don't want to go first risking no reciprocation. I'm nervous of being misunderstood by my colleagues. I'm anxious that it will come out wrong or that I'm in no moral position to point out the glaringly obvious. I feel my insides contracting and constricting with self-doubt and self-paralysis.

Even in ministry, I can sense when it's time to go there. God is telling me to address something that can't be delayed another day. To broach the issue. To ask the question. To share the dream. To wonder out loud in the presence of the staff. To ask my wife the fearful question, "What's wrong?" Oh my, having the heart to go there not knowing where there might take you is often a daunting notion. In some ways, I'd rather go anywhere but there. Is there another way? Can't someone else do it? I'm not equal to the task! I'm out of my league!

And then the voice of God whispers in the stillness and the smallness I've become accustomed to: "Now is the time, this is place, you are the person. I will be with you." And with painful trepidation, I muster the man inside me to take heart and speak truth as I see it. I may not always be right, but at least I'm not living in silent misery. I'm making my mark on the sands of time. I'm staking my claim. I'm numbering my days instead of numbing them.

Lord, give me the heart to tell people whatever you lay on my heart to share. "I love you." "You make me proud." "I disagree with you." "I have an idea." "I'm scared, are you?" "Thank you." "I miss your friendship." "That is sin." "I'm depressed and borderline suicidal." "I'm lonely, can we meet up sometime?" "You hurt my feelings." "You make me very, very happy." "Are you ok?" "Why do you keep doing that?" "I'm going down...I need help." "I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?" "You know what I love about you...?" Yeah...give me the heart to tell people what could easily just rot inside my soul.

I want to number my days instead of numbing them.

Behind the Red Glass

England, originally uploaded by bethanylee.

Almost a year ago in England with two incredible gals! For Jennalise's hen party we trapsed around the city of London and its surrounding parts. We enjoyed being tourists!