“the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love; and be loved in return.”

-Eden Ahbez

{forewarning: the contents of jessie’s brain are fixin’ to get dumped all over this post.  it might get messy.  you have been warned.}

i believe in love.  i’ll start with that.  i also believe we were created to give and receive love.  but what i don’t understand is how humanity as a whole walks this planet with an incomparable instability in the one thing that we all are starving for: love.

i know – God is love.  and don’t get me wrong, i believe this too – with ALL my heart actually. and if you’re afraid i might get blasphemous up in here, then maybe you shouldn’t continue reading because i just might.  there has to be a glitch in the matrix or something because God is such a wild mystery.  we can’t know or understand His ways or thoughts or workings and yet we are called to trust and obey, submit and die, surrender and abide.  yes it seems totally wonky, that’s because it IS totally wonky.  but what i am curious about is the love part.  i want to feel and hear and experience love – every single day.  i have like 5 (or more) love languages and when they’re not being spoken to me i feel like i have the flu.  and i am supposed to be 100% dependent on God to fulfill this?!  God who doesn’t actually call me or Facebook me or physically sit and have a cup of coffee with me?

which is where people come in, i suppose.

Dearly Beloved,

“Here ya go, here’s some people you can touch and smell and laugh with…..buuuuuut one little thing, they’re gonna burn you. and break your heart and leave you and yell at you sometimes.”

Love, God.

awesome.  so we have people – in people form – so we can experience some form of intimacy & community on earth, right?  but it usually leaves people feeling more hungry and crippled and parched and untrusting than feeling “loved”.  so then we’re supposed to go to God, apparently?

P.S.  when these people hurt you, come see me.

but once these kids have been burned by people (especially God-loving people), they have a HUGE reluctancy to come to God for love or anyone associated with God.  are you with me?

so recently i’ve had a couple random conversations with several different people about this whole “God loving me” issue.  and i am stumped.  now listen, for whatever reason, i believe it.  it’s true, i totally 100% buy it.  God loves me – and that’s that.  i have literally been through hell and back and felt the kiss, the whisper, the physical grasp of Jesus’ hand in my hand pulling me out of my shit, and i can say without blinking an eye that i know, that i know, that i know, that God loves me.  period.  i’ve also experienced the “highs” with the Lord and been blessed and pursed by Him and wooed by Him and enchanted by Him; confirming and solidifying that He does indeed love me.  i’ve heard Him speak, He’s given me dreams, He’s shown up when I’ve asked Him to.  and I have consciously created a roll-a-dex in my brain to document all the times He has been who He says He is.  so i don’t ever forget.  so i can tell others; tell myself.  so i can know, that i know, that i know, when life’s shit wall knocks me on my keister again.  (inevitable)  that i still know it.  He loves me.

but that’s my story; my roll-a-dex.  i get stumped as to what to say to these people that really truly do NOT believe that God loves them.  i know He does.  for half of the conversation i’m watching this person surgically cut their belly open and spill their bright red guts about how God didn’t come through for them, and how God allowed someone they love to die, or how God lied to them, abandoned them, how God failed them, how God let their friend get cancer.  and while the bright red spills to the floor and pools around my feet i am simultaneously hearing the heart of Jesus all choked up, beating faster, sobbing for His beloved who does not believe in the love. who is hurt and scared and angry and bitter.  and i become but a stunned operator frantically trying to find the right cables to plug into the right holes to connect these two pools of blood to each other before this person walks away.  and i never seem to make the connection.  and i hear the beeping of Jesus’ heart monitor and the beeping of the beloved’s and then the call is dropped.  dial tone……..

heard a great one-liner that i have since adopted that is so applicable to my life right now.  ”you can’t feel loved if you don’t feel understood”.  and i am sad for all the misunderstood.  isn’t it why so many people commit suicide and have school shootings?  they’re “misunderstood”?  if people don’t feel like the Lord understands them, then they’re not going to feel loved by Him.  so how does one bridge the gap between mortal and immortal?  finite and infinite?  perfect love and effed up beggars?  how can i convey to these beloved that they really are loved?  that Jesus never left, never will leave and everyday carries a giant, waving, sparkling banner over them that reads “I AM SOOOO CRAZY ABOUT THIS ONE!!!!!  I MEAN BANANAS!!!!”  how do we move past the awful, awful things that happen in life and re-enlist in what the Bible calls a “child-like faith”?

everything is so contrary to what comes naturally.  what the Lord suggests we do makes NO sense – at all actually.

P.P.S.  just trust me, guys!  i got this.

 uh…….ok?  but if i let myself dive into the brackish, murky pools of “why do bad things happen to good people?” and “where’s God when…..?”  and “how can God be good when….?” i realize may drown there.  treading the thick waters of questions with no answers.  a pool of no hope.  a bottomless abyss that most likely contains every gross and sinister water creature you could imagine.  snakes, dragons, crocodiles, barracuda, those scary angler fish, sharks, you name it ; all ready to rip off your limbs, and let you bleed out to death.  i definitely don’t think it’s wrong to ask hard questions or even to doubt the Lord or speculate why He does what He does.  i DO think it’s dangerous to stay there, though.  to dive headlong into that pool with no plan to come back out and at least try something else.  it’s a death wish in my opinion.  and if you’re chillin’ in that pool with both your middle fingers at God; at the world, at whoever, then chances are you’re probably not able to see or hear Him with all the hate-sludge in your ears and eye sockets.  but who knows…..i mean He is God and can do anything.  (so says me).

OR…..there’s this….

They triumphed over him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death. 

i choose to dive headlong into this pool: the blood of the lamb.  oh yeah, it’s completely crazy – if not crazier, probably.  and it’s unclear and unknown and totally weird, for sure.  but to have the hope that i can triumph over the dark waters and shitty shadows of this world by choosing the blood of the lamb and by hearing and spreading the stories of when God showed up in other people’s lives; in MY LIFE for crying out loud!  then heck, the frick yes – i choose this pool.  i’ll climb out of it regularly and wander around shivering, forgetting where it is from time to time, yeah.  but i want to be here.  i don’t get it, but i think if i stay here long enough i will hopefully learn how to just be ok with it; without having to understand everything all the time.

somehow this is love?  i guess.  i don’t know actually.  but for me, i’d rather face the hardships of the world with a backpack full of hope and trust and believe that i am loved; that i am lovable, that God’s got my back and that He is who He says He is even though i don’t usually understand why He does what He does when He does it.  so yeah……i’d rather choose that than the alternative.  but that’s just me.

there’s one thing that i have adopted that i can bare witness to, and it’s: asking.  the Bible told me to ask and i shall receive.  so i’m a black & white kinda girl and did just that.  a couple years ago i started asking.  if i felt weak in the “love” category i would think up things that would make me feel loved and i would specifically ask God to do them for me.  (i know….bonkers, right?)  silly things like “hey God of the universe, little jessie here, and i want some flowers this week – flowers would make me feel loved, God.  so do something about it?”  and i kid you not – flowers started showing up on my doorstep.  and my heart swelled in size; i was astonished!!!  He is who He says He is!  holy crap.  no way.  so i tried another thing.  not quite so specific “my heart feels sad and needs to be wooed.  do you do that?”  a few months rolled by and then i started receiving anonymous packages in the mail filled with feathers.  for several months i got these packages from all over the world and in each one was some feathers and a small note that read “God Knows”.  that’s it.  i swear this is a true story.  (FYI: i am nuts about feathers – they’re pretty much little private love notes from God to me – have been my whole life).

now of course this was orchestrated by people – but the request was made only to God.  i asked Him to woo me and He did.  i thanked Him for using people to bless me.  and in turn i felt loved.

so let me shut this wild machine down…….pick a pool and start asking.

i want to be one who triumphs, and i want you to too.  it’s ok if you can’t take my word for it, but…..

you. are. loved.