Loving intensely

Two Christmas Eves ago, I texted an overseas friend to wish her happy holidays. We had only become friends a couple of weeks before, but it was one of those friendships that starts out really strongly. I felt like I'd always known her. Actually, a couple days after I met her, I already felt like she was a part of my family.

When I texted her, I didn't expect a response. I knew she was with her family, and it was Christmas, after all. But not long after I sent my message, my phone lit up. Her reply was loving and intense, just like she is. Lots of exclamations, capital letters, and terms of endearment all packed into a little message.

People have all sorts of ways of expressing love. There is a book by Dr. Gary Chapman called The 5 Love Languages. It identifies the 5 major "languages of love" as the following:
1) quality time
2) words of affirmation
3) gifts
4) acts of service
5) physical touch

You can have one preferred way of receiving love, and one preferred way of expressing love to others. Sometimes those match up, and sometimes they don't. I know that for me, I feel loved by all 5 of the ways of expressing love, but I feel most loved by quality time and words of affirmation. I am not sure how I express love the best to others.

I get the feeling that I express love in the same manner in which I have been loved. I think about all the people who have loved me in my life: family members, friends, the pets I've had, acquaintances, friends of friends, strangers, people in other countries, people who started out disliking me and then grew to like me... I have grown and become a better person with each example, each experience of love in my life. I don't know how to explain it except to say that as I grow older and experience more love, my definition of love becomes broader and broader. And I have to thank each and every person who has ever loved me; everyone adds a new perspective of love to my consciousness.

Now, let's look at the source of this love and other examples of love in our lives: to me, that source of love is God. And because we are God's creation, we love people and are in turn loved back by people. And sometimes we love pretty intensely, and are loved back pretty intensely. Sometimes it is more relaxed, and may take a while for the full extent of the love to be shown or expressed. And each way of loving, each expression of love, is a blessing and a gift from God.

All love comes from above. One of my favorite verses talks about gifts: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights" (James 1:17). Whatever good we have in our life is a reflection of the goodness of God, a gift that is given to us, His beloved children. The amount that God loves us is more than we will ever understand here on earth. Jesus loves intensely, God loves intensely, and likewise, we reflect their love when we love people, animals, and the world around us.

However, even though we are loved by God, sometimes love can seem unexpected, foreign, even undeserved. In my own life, I look back at even just the past year, and there were so many times when a friend or family member reached out to me, loved me, and I didn't know what to do or say. The amount of love that I felt was so strong, so overwhelming, but in a good way. This amount of love made me so grateful for life and everything in it. Every day was like a present that I was opening, to discover what goodness it contained.

Along these same lines, the friend I texted a couple years ago was so intensely loving from the get-go, and I didn't know how to respond at first. She began our friendship by telling me she was upset with me for not introducing myself when I first saw her. "You didn't come over. You denied me the opportunity to give you a hug." How does one respond to that? This person had so much love to give, so much affection, that she never let me forget that day when she was denied the opportunity to express some of that love. Later in our friendship, when I would get down on myself about something, she would say, "What are you talking about? You are WONDERFUL! Any other thinking is like when you thought you were going to bother me by saying hello that one time..." I definitely didn't feel that I deserved the amount of love that she was pouring out, but at the same time, it opened my eyes to another example of incredible love that was a direct reflection of God's love.

Why do we ever feel unworthy of this love, from people or from God? The Bible tells us, "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God" (1 John 3:1). We are His children, He is our Father. How could we ever doubt that He loves us, or that we are lovable? Of course, as humans we all make mistakes; we all stumble and have challenges and sometimes don't act in ways that demonstrate our highest selves. But God, as our parent, will always love us, and we, as His children, will always be lovable and worthy of that love. If we could only see ourselves as God sees us... or even, for that matter, as our dearest friends see us. We would be a lot more patient with ourselves, and definitely more loving towards ourselves.

Mindy Jostyn has a wonderful song, In His Eyes, which always helps me in seeing that I am worthy of being loved. An excerpt is below:

"In His eyes, you're a fire that never goes out
A light on the top of a hill.

Now and forever, that light never dies
You're dearly beloved in His eyes."

If we could see the way that God sees us, it would change our views of ourselves, and of those around us. We are all worthy of love, and of being recognized as precious children of God.

There is another bible passage which has brought me a lot of comfort this past year, about how God helps us because He loves us so dearly.

“He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
he drew me out of deep waters.
He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
from my foes, who were too strong for me.
They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
but the Lord was my support. 
He brought me out into a spacious place;
he rescued me because he delighted in me."
-- 2 Samuel 22:17-20

Many times this year, I focused on the last line: "He rescued me because he delighted in me." And I would remind myself that as my Heavenly Father, He loved me as one of His precious daughters. I kept thinking about all the (sometimes overwhelming) love I felt in my life from people and from my dog, and how much greater His love for me was. That is a lot of love, an incomprehensible amount of love. Intense.

I am so grateful for the gift of feeling love for God's creation, and for feeling love from God's creation. And I am so grateful for the source of all of our love, the One who loves us the most intensely of all.