I noticed the way her eyes changed.  That when she was loved, she took note.  She stood up straighter.  She smiled more.

She transformed.

And I was such a broken version of love to her, my friend.

Their eyes- they were tired and broken inside when they didn't think they were loved.

And I thought, If only I could love deeper and longer, harder and better.  

But when I dug to the bottom of my heart I found that I didn't have all that much to give.

How do I grow this?  I asked myself.


Grow love.  With deep roots.  Flowers out of nothing?  Where are the seeds for this kind of love?

It's startling to realize that when it comes down to it, I don't have a Mother Theresa heart after all.  I have my limits.  I have to work at love.

And I have to work at not becoming bitter and broken, bulleted and butchered through.

Once I sat down in a living room with a man who started Ratanak, an organization that works to free girls in Cambodia from the sex trade industry.  He was sharing with us about how their organization started.  But what stood out to me was the way he talked about those girls like they were his own, like his heart would burst open for them.  He loved them.  

A Father's love, though they were not his own children.

It reminds me of how God talks about us.

Like we are his children.  He loves us.

Moments like that profoundly impact me.  Because I always have a hard time believing I'm loved.  And when I see it so well displayed sometimes it knocks my socks off.

This illusive thing exists.

Because God wants it to exist.

Love.

Outside the church today waiting to help decorate for a grad for the youth group I am involved with, I sat in my car thinking about the events of the next few days.  Decorations.  An evening celebrating the grads.  A grad afterparty.  Then a road trip with the grads.  Its going to be an adventure- and I was going to come home and crash in my bed at the end of the weekend wondering if I'll ever be young again.

I'll have aged fifty years by the end of the weekend.

But it would be worth it.  To show love.

As I sat there I had a smile in my heart.

I choose this.  I choose to sit outside this church, killing time - no using my time- for these types of things.  I choose this kind of packed lifestyle.  To love.

And it is in these types of choices that I become the type of person I want to be.  It is- even more- the type of person God made me to be.

Even in the times I struggle through it.  Because we all have bad days- days where we fall apart and feel like we just can't do it anymore.

How can I love when...?

But we can.  And- with God's example.  We will.

Because when I see my friends stand taller and know with confidence that I love them, it's worth it.

For me, it is the love of Christ on the cross that changed me.

And it continues to change me- if I allow it.

And maybe the seasons will look differently in how I love, where I love and who I love, but the one thing remains.  I will love.

Because God loved me first (1 John 4:19).