Learning to Love
Hello, everyone! I hope you all had an awesome Easter this
past Sunday. Unfortunately, my parents
and I were driving home from Florida so we had an unusual Easter. In fact, after late-night girly slumber
parties with my best friend, I slept most of the day.
A couple of posts ago, I shared with
you all that God was asking me to give up my riding lessons, something very
dear to me. I reminded you all that
sometimes the sacrifices God calls us to make aren’t always easy. After all, they really wouldn’t be sacrifices
if they weren’t a little difficult, would they be? With that said though, our journey is bound
to be marked by some highs and some lows, by some melt-downs and some
breakthroughs.
I was at my riding lesson yet again
Wednesday afternoon, and although I had hoped to postpone my leaving until the
beginning of May, I knew in my heart that it was time to say goodbye. Procrastination was only making it more
difficult and breaking my heart more, and I knew if I didn’t take the first
step to leaving then, I never would. So
after four and a half years of dreaming of becoming a professional horse
trainer someday, I told my riding instructor that next Wednesday will be my
last riding lesson.
Tears sprung up in my eyes when I
told her, but the real tears came later.
When I got home, I collapsed on my bedroom floor and allowed them
release. It was a low point for me in my
journey of faith. It was a
melt-down.
Although
I was heartbroken over having to give up something so special to me, I knew the
great amount of tears was not being shed over the loss of my riding lessons. There was something underlying that was
breaking me more. I moved into a second
stage of my hurt and I found myself so confused with my life and what God was
doing. I felt lost, like a wandering
little kitten. I found myself leaning
over my bedside, face-down on the quilt, hands in a fist as the tears from sobs
ran down my cheeks, and screaming out to God, asking “Why?” Why had He taken everything from me it
seemed? Why did it hurt so much? I just wanted someone to hold me and tell me
it was okay.
Finally
the raging storm passed, and I thought there were no more tears to be
shed. But my heart was still heavy. My joy was still clouded over. I drew a deep breath, blew my nose and dabbed
at the rivulets on my cheeks were the teardrops had run. I forced myself to my feet, fighting for
composure. The melt-down was over.
But
as I often am, I was wrong. On the other
side of every melt-down is a breakthrough, and I had yet to even reach the
peak. A short while later, another
outburst of tears came. I ran upstairs
to my bedroom again and fell broken against the doorframe of my bathroom,
clinging to it desperately as my heart heaved with the sobs. Stage three had erupted, and I faced my underlying
distress, one of the lessons in my new season… love. I had confessed while talking to my best
friend that I felt afraid to allow God to continue teaching me to love because
I was fearful that He would take it away, ask me to give it up, just as He had
done all of my former dreams. But as I
clung sobbing to that doorframe, I realized I wasn’t fearful of trusting God
with my heart, but I was fearful of love itself. The Lord opened my eyes in that moment to see
the power of love, and I found myself terrified. I can’t recall the last time in my life that
I felt so scared to death of something.
I never knew that love could be so strong. That such a love even existed. That there was an emotion, a virtue, that
could make a heart feel like it was going to burst, that it was going to
overflow with more love than it could ever hold. That love could be so selfless and desire not
to get what it wanted from others but to give to others instead
all it could. How could love bring so
much comfort, so much joy, so much support, and yet at the same time be so
terrifying? I asked myself. I was so
frightened by its intensity. Love is a very
real emotion.
Until
that moment, I had thought I knew about love… but I really knew very
little. God taught me in that broken place
another lesson on love, on a side of love that no one had ever told me about
before. Love is as sweet, beautiful, and
tender as a flower in bloom, but it’s also as conquering, as ferocious, devastating,
and relentless as a hurricane, and like a storm, it too leaves nothing in its
path unchanged.
So
let me ask you the question I was forced to ask myself… “Is it worth it?” Love in any kind of relationship makes you
vulnerable. It may leave you confused by
your own unfamiliar feelings, and if you choose to love, you will never be the
same again. As my aunt recently acknowledged
of me, I seem a lot happier and freer now, and I am because of the work God’s
been doing in my heart through this lesson.
Love also opens the door for hurt and disappointment sometimes though,
for blows to leave bruises on your heart.
But is it worth it? If you were
that girl, crying and clinging to the doorframe as if it were your last
connection to sanity… what would you choose?
The
breakthrough shone forth on the other side of the pain and the melt-down as I
answered. The tears finally had
run dry, and I smiled. My joy and my
expectancy returned and so did my laughter.
The weight from my heavy heart was lifted and the peace of God filled my
heart again. And suddenly, it didn’t
matter if anything else in my life ever made sense again. While God had been extinguishing the fire of
my riding lessons and all of my girlish dreams, He had begun igniting a new
fire, even if it too is only for a season… the lesson of love.
So
as you can guess, I decided that love is too beautiful to give up and return to
a life without it because of my fear of the unfamiliarity of it. I could’ve fought against it and easily
returned to the hardened heart I carried only months ago. But to me, it was worth the risk. The unknown lies ahead, but I promised to allow
Him to take me as far into this thing called love as He wants to and He’s
giving me the courage now to love fearlessly.
“There is no fear in love. But
perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in
love.” (1Jn 4:18)
Is it
worth it? How did you respond? That’s a question only you can answer for
yourself. It’s a decision each heart
must make for itself, but once you do, no matter how you choose, you’ll never
be the same again. Some people go
through their whole life without ever loving and they avoid the pain of being
hurt by the vulnerability of it. But
even they make a sacrifice for that security; they never know the beauty
of loving and being loved. How much is
it worth to you? Love can be dangerous,
yes, but it’s also divine, for as my best friend reminded me, God is Love. “God is love.
Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.” (1Jn 4:16)
Our God is a god of love and wants to orchestrate love in the hearts of
each of us if we’ll only allow Him to. But
are you willing to take the chance and live in the freedom to love
fearlessly? Do you have the courage it
takes? Love is a mandate from God. “A new command I give you: Love one
another. As I have loved you, so you
must love one another. By this all men
will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (Jn
13:34&35) “… love one another
deeply, from the heart.” (1Pe 1:22) Will
you “play it safe”… or will you open your heart, be obedient, and take the risk
for the beauty of all that love has to offer?
“Dear
friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and
knows God. Whoever does not love does
not know God, because God is love.”
1John 4:7&8
Photo courtesy: www.123rf.com
~We’ve all heard of the phrase “pulling on her/ his heartstrings,”
but heart-chords? I was struggling to
decide what to name my blog. I wanted it
to be a name that was both creative and meaningful. As I pondered, my gaze fell upon my acoustic
guitar where it stands in my bedroom, and the Lord reminded me that our hearts-
our lives- are instruments. They are
constantly in song, but what melody our heart plays is each of our own
decisions. They can play a melody for
praise or for entertainment. A musician
selects his songs according to his audience.
So do we. Whether our audience is
the world or the Lord, our song will be different. This blog is designed to first, increase my
awareness in finding God and His guidance in my every day and second, to share
the music lessons He teaches me in tuning my heart to learn the chords of
praise He longs to play on my heart-instrument.
Music is a powerful tool. Use it
for His glory. “He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of
praise to our God. Many will see and fear
and put their trust in the Lord.” Psalm 40:3
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