I will not wait to love as best I can

"I will not wait to love as best I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is not a way to live, to wait to love." - David Eggers

I read this quote a while back and remember being taken aback like I had been smacked upside the head but was in a rush so I just jotted it on a piece of paper and shoved into a journal to remember to look at and reflect on later…then I forgot about it, until just recently when I decided I felt like writing again and found it in an old journal I hadn’t written in for ages. I unfolded the edges and read it again. And there it was again, that same smack upside the head.

I’ve always been a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to random things like writing papers and baking cookies. They always needed a little something extra; they were never quite right. The biggie of the bunch was love. To be able to love, I always thought, I needed a lot of work and I did and still do. I kept the thought in my head that if I can just fix this bad trait or this lack of trust or my fears, if I could just get my act together-then maybe I could love someone or someone could love me. If everything could be just so then…it could be great. The problem is, everything will never be just so. If everyone thought this way, nobody would ever love anybody. It would be a world without love, which is the saddest of all thoughts. Sure we may be not be the best at loving people, but it’s a process. All the great things in this life are a process; it’s like taking the long road, getting lost along the way but seeing so much more beauty in the meantime.

Recently, life and the circumstance at hand have me marinating on this whole idea of waiting to love. The thought I’ve kept coming back to over these past few weeks is that faith and love are a choice. We wake up every day and choose to love this person and this God. We arrange our lives in a way that will support them and grow those relationships. We strive to better them. But in the end, we’re human and flawed and we mess up and we make mistakes and we don’t love well. And in those moments, thank goodness for grace and forgiveness. We soak and sit in that grace. I love how Anne LaMott puts it, "I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us." We grow and learn and we wake up to another day and we try again, to love fully and well. It's a process we learn to embrace and fall into the rhythm of. We will never love perfectly, not even in the future. But we can love the best we can, knowing that we are imperfect and it will be ridiculously tough at times. We can acknowledge it for the process that is is, and we will be all the better for it in the end.

It is not a way to live, to wait to love.

trust

‎"how glorious the splendor of a human heart that trusts that it is loved." -b. manning

trust is one of those things in life that is so incredibly beautiful yet so impossible to quantify.

i hear it so often.

trust in the lord. trust me.

it's so easy to say and yet so hard to live.

it's so hard to trust when i can't see the road ahead.

it's so hard to trust when i don't know if the reward will outweigh the risk.

it's so hard to trust when i fear my heart will get broken.

yet,

somehow, in spite of the risk and the unknown

i choose to trust.

trust my intuition

trust that still small voice

trust that i am loved,

so dearly loved.

on love

"When you're in love, you can't stop smiling, yet you can't smile enough."

-My Aunt Cathy

On Saturday, my cousin Brian got married to Jennifer, the love of his life. I couldn't be happier for the two of them and their new life together. Brian is a smiley guy to begin with but he was just beaming and giddy all day.

In the car as we were driving back to the ferry, we were reflecting on the day and talking about how happy B was and my aunt out of nowhere and so nonchalantly rattles off this beautiful but true string of words. "When you're in love, you can't stop smiling, yet you can't smile enough."

I just like that, a lot.

perspective. perfectly so.

I was at work the other day, doing what i do, making coffee and joking around with the friendly faces I have come to love like family, when out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a little spider. I think I let out a little "eep" as it descended from the lamp right in front of my eyes. He was out of the way enough that I wouldn't touch him while serving customers and he didn't (to my knowledge) have the gusto to swing onto someone's date bar.

I kept glancing at him here and there to see what he was up to, and all I saw was him climbing up and then climbing down, walking over here and walking over there.

When the line ended and people had continued about their days, I leaned in close to the little guy and when I looked at a certain angle in a certain light, I caught a glimpse of a beautifully constructed web. Wow. I took a moment to be humbled and acknowledge the fact that in that past hour, I had served a few people some caffeine and some smiles while this little guy had been slaving away over a home and what a beautiful whimsical creation he made. I took in the moment, feeling like this little spider had taught me something, but I wasn't quite sure what.

There was so much going on. I was distracted. Even when I glanced at the spider, all I saw was the spider, not the incredible web around it. Spider webs are funny like that. Life is funny like that. The light had to shine just right for me to see it. But man, in that light that lit up the web just perfectly so, I could see all the little intricate patterns that fit together perfectly. It was like a symphony.

I'd like to think that if I had the chance to see my life in that same light that shines just perfectly so, that I would feel that same feeling of awe at the beautifully orchestrated symphony that is our lives. If only. Since I don't have the luxury of that perspective right now, I've decided to just live as if I did. Because, I do believe God is at work in every little intricate detail and I would be in complete and total awe if I had the eyes to see it all.

verse

We don't yet see things clearly

We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist

But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright

We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us,

knowing him directly just as he knows us.

But for right now, until that completeness

We have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation;

Trust steadily in God

Hope unswervingly

Love extravagantly

And the best of the three is love.

I Corinthians 13:12-13

thankful, still.

"Thankfulness depends on what is in your heart, not what is in your hand."

I've been marinating on this quote all day. My friend Rachelle has it written on the signature of her emails and every time I read it I have to stop and let it sink into my bones. Thankfulness is a posture and an attitude that we control. It does not depend on what we physically hold. We can have everything and yet keep ungrateful hearts or we can have absolutely nothing and be thankful still.

I've been learning how to be grateful in this season of looking for jobs. I have gotten my hopes up countless times only to be let down easy. It is so hard to put myself out there again and again, hoping that this one may be the one that works out, only to be brought to my knees again wondering why it didn't work out, why it wasn't the right fit. And that's where I find myself again tonight. I had wanted this one job to work out. It was perfect and I wanted it so badly. I let myself hope for it. I don't like to hope for things, it's risky and puts much at stake. I can't turn it off though- I am wired to hope. After a couple weeks of hoping, it was a blow to find out I didn't get the job. It bummed me out; it was an accumulation of all the let downs. I had my teary drive to work this evening, a blubbery phone call to my parents and a general bummed out attitude. And here I am, stuck on it. I'll let myself be sad for the night but I won't let it get me down. I'll wake up tomorrow and put myself out there again and keep hoping because that's the kind of girl my parents raised me to be, and I'm all the better for it.

God has plans for me, I truly believe that. I don't believe it just happened to be the case that I was able to raise funds and get enough time off work to go to Haiti three times this past year- to help and serve, to use my giftings and strengths in a way that empowered and helped in the restoration and rebuilding of Haiti. That time was just what my heart needed and I don't think that's coincidence at all.

I'm just waiting to see how God unfolds this little life of mine in His good and perfect timing.
And in the waiting, I am thankful, still.

Hinds Feet on High Places

I've been reading this book, Hinds Feet on High Places for a few days now and just loving it. It's a beautiful allegory about spiritual journeys and highs and lows. Last night I opened it up where I had left off, a chapter on the desert. It's been so perfectly timed for this week and this season of life. Had to share it.

They stayed at the huts in the desert for several days, and Much-Afraid learned many things which she had never heard before.

One thing, however, made a special impression upon her. In all that great desert, there was not a single green thing growing, neither tree nor flower nor plant save here and there a patch of straggly grey cacti.

On the last morning she was walking near the tents and huts of the desert dwellers, when in a lonely corner behind a wall she came upon a little golden-yellow flower, growing all alone. An old pipe was connected with a water tank. In the pipe was a tiny hole through which came an occasional drop of water. Where the drops fell one by one, there grew the little golden flower, though where the seed had come from, Much-Afraid could not imagine, for there were no birds anywhere and no other growing things.

She stopped over the lonely, lovely little golden face, lifted up so hopefully and so bravely to the feeble drip, and cried out softly, "What is your name, little flower, for I never saw one like you before."

The tiny plant answered at once in a tone as golden as itself, "Behold me! My name is Acceptance-with-Joy.