Reclaiming love.
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by your name; you are mine...
Because you are precious in my sight
and honored, and I love you…~Isaiah 43:1b, 4a
As a child, you could often find me outside – playing in the garden, climbing trees, riding my bike down the county road, working my sheep for 4-H. I'd be by myself as much or more than with a sibling, parent, or friend. My imagination always kept me company if I needed a distraction, but otherwise, I recall feeling content, safe, and even, I daresay, happy.
Childhood was a peaceful time for me, and I managed to escape my high school years relatively unscathed by teenage angst. In fact, I can think of only one argument I had with my mom during that time. I can also recall an argument with my dad when I was on a job with him for our irrigation business before getting stuck in a recently wet and muddy field. I was right, and we both know it.
It was college that started to disrupt my so-called peace. The outside world encroached, and all of a sudden (or so it seemed), life was not what I thought it was. I had more questions. I experienced more hurt and felt more pain. The world and its people were more broken than I had realized.
During my college years, I wrestled with God and my questions and my faith. At the end of that time, my fledgling faith and I stepped foot onto the stage of adulthood, ready to see what was next. And thus, the next ten years of teaching, moving, and trying to build a life began.
These 10 years have challenged me in ways I could not have imagined. I have either experienced or witnessed great brokenness in myself, in others, and in the world. And truth be told, I’m not all that excited for the next 10 years, let alone longer. In just the past six months alone, I have seen death, divorce, depression, isolation, sickness, and financial burdens in my life and in the lives of those close to me. And I start to wonder, what’s the point?
It can be easy to get lost in the darkness and forget the light.
Love, goodness, gentleness, joy – these and the other fruits of the Spirit become a hot commodity in times like this. But fruit is grown and does not just magically appear. I cannot expect to find these things if I have not spent time with God cultivating them in my life. The fruit I have been most focused on recently is love.
I have forgotten what God says, so I have not felt loved or loveable. God says in Isaiah that I am His. I am precious, honored, and loved because God sees me as precious, honorable, and worthy of love. Isaiah 43 is directly addressing Israel, yet I have no issue in claiming God’s words as truth for my own life. First, God is addressing His people as Creator God, and He created me. Second, God states His position as Redeemer, and He has redeemed me. In this position, I am created and redeemed by God, thereby giving me the right to be called a daughter of God (John 1:12). Therefore, I can trust God’s words that He loves me and claims me as His own.
The problem is that I do not always act or think in a way that reflects this truth. I doubt God's love for me, so I doubt my own worth. I can dig into why I think this all the livelong day, but the lies run deep, and it is not so simple to dig them out again. We are often told to replace the lies with truth. Identify the lie, and then identify God’s truth that replaces it. Then repeat it over and over and over again. I would add, repeat it until the truth is so automatic that the second you start to think the lie, the truth pops up and smothers it. I imagine a person who has caught on fire, and another comes up behind them with a blanket to extinguish the flames. The person who was on fire may be a bit singed and suffer some burns, but they are alive and stronger for the scars they will now wear.
I am not there yet. I am still repeating God's truth to myself over and over again. Sometimes, I get lazy and quit repeating it, and then I stumble and have to start again. I have learned that I cannot become complacent in repeating God's truth in my life because I always fall when I forget to stay focused on God and His truth.
As I end this post, I would like to leave you with a thought. We know brokenness exists. We know life is not always sunshine and daisies. But we cannot let the darkness overcome the light. Consider this paragraph from Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time (one of my favorites). In this part of the book, the characters are learning about the Dark Thing, an evil that is trying to take over.
Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure. Then, slowly, the shining dwindled until it, too, was gone, and there was nothing but stars and starlight. No shadows. No fear. Only the stars and the clear darkness of space, quite different from the fearful darkness of the Thing. (Chapter 6)
What are you going to do today to battle your own darkness?
What thing in your life is threatening your peace, your joy, your faith? We all have a battle we're fighting, even if it is invisible to others, but that does not mean we cannot take a stand and reclaim what we have lost.
So I challenge myself, and I challenge you, what will you take back today with God's truth?
