What is love?

Baby don’t hurt me no more… just kidding 

Hello Friends! Something God has been teaching me is the power in sharing OUR stories. The first two weeks in Albania we were asked to share a testimony almost everyday. I have so many stories of The Lord’s faithfulness throughout my life and He  has asked me to share more vulnerable parts of my story with you that I haven’t done so publicly before. 

Growing up I knew of God but didn’t really know God. Meaning I didn’t have a personal relationship with Him. I heard how good and loving He was but didn’t understood. What little I did know of Him was challenged when my mother left when I was young. This left me confused and started an internal struggle of feeling unworthy of love. I felt like I was unwanted by my mom, so how could I believe God wanted or loved me? (A huge lie from the enemy) 

Years passed while I still didn’t really know God and my mom returned into my life. We began reconciling the relationship at that time. Still confused I felt I needed to do things to earn love. That if I was just a good enough person that I could prevent people from not loving me. That people would love me as long as I made them happy regardless what it did to me. (Spoiler alert: that doesn’t work) 

The darkest season I’ve walked through came when my dad passed away. I couldn’t understand how this good and loving God could take my dad away. This started a long spiral into depression and anxiety. I didn’t know who I was and what to do without my dad around anymore. 

I started grasping onto whatever kind of love I could get even if it wasn’t healthy because I didn’t want to be alone. This led to a string of relationships that just further broke me and warped my sense of love. That as long as I had someone it didn’t matter how I was treated because I wasn’t alone. I hurt a lot of people and was hurt a lot during this time. This is something I am still seeking forgiveness and healing from. 

Two years ago I was living in New York City and going through my divorce. Father’s Day 2019 came and I knew I wanted to be somewhere with Light and decided to go to church. A month later I found myself drunk going for a run at 2am on 4th of July (sorry family). The first two miles of that run I was screaming, crying, and wrestling with the Lord about all these things. That’s when He met me halfway through. 

He stopped me in my tracks and called me His beloved. He asked me to come home to Him. That my definition of love did not define His love. I continued to run for two more miles weeping but this time I was full of this unexplainable joy. 

Over the course of the last two years I have still wrestled with understanding His love. That not only is God love (1 Jn 4:8) but that His love is unconditional. 

Going to church on and off throughout my childhood we were often told John 3:16 how “God so loved the world that He gave His only son so that we can have eternal life”. This is something that was head knowledge but never heart knowledge until recently. 

Since meeting the Lord that night running toward the Verrazano bridge in Brooklyn life hasn’t been all rainbow and butterflies. I was deeply enslaved to sins and allowing the enemy to speak lies to me. It has been quite a journey coming out of agreement with those lies. 

However, no matter how hard it has been there has also been unending joy, love and freedom. Since then there has been a reconciling of hurts in various relationships. I am working on dying to myself and obeying the commands of the Lord. 

His love for you and me is unconditional. He made us with his own hands. (Gen. 1:27) We are perfectly and wondrously made  (Ps 139:14) and not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 Jn 4:10)

My encouragement for you is to seek His love. If you don’t understand it, then seek His word and wrestle with it. He can handle your wrestling when it is with Him. He will reveal himself to you and delights in each and every one of us.