God's Unfailing Love

I see what “love” has been for me. I see the mess it has become and tears streak down my cheeks. I begin to see, in this silence, unfailing love. I begin to see just what a miracle my life really is. Sometimes I forget how far I have come. Sometimes I can't see clearly the road I have come down.

My life has been from the onset filled with tainted love, broken love, false love. I have lived in the wake of a thing called love that is so very far from God's idea of love that it bares no resemblance to His plan of love. There have been so many murky messages about love planted in the garden of my heart throughout my lifetime that it is a wonder I have even the desire to know love.

I have seen the result of a society abandoned to the idea of “free love.” I've seen what comes of doing “whatever makes you happy” and “What feels good.” I know the resulting pain of selfish “love”.

Selfish love that is only out to please oneself hurts far more then the “lovers” who chose that path. It crushes the spirit of their offspring. It leaves families in ruin, and without hope of escape.

I have lived the lie this world offers as love. And I want no part of it. I have felt the sting of false love from my earliest memories and it's end leads to a broken life, filled with despair and heartache.

Love, real love, is never free. It is not an easy or safe road to travel. It is dangerous and it is painful. It is so foreign to the idea of love I have been given as example that even the notion of a God of love, a Father of love, has been a struggle for me to embrace.

How can I begin to understand the unfailing love of God, in a world with such tainted and broken love? With such a reality, where can I even begin?

As I sit here in the dark writing, my mind is like a row boat in a tempest battered by the memories of my youth. So many moments of love unattainable crash into my thoughts. And I recall, years filled with rejection and reproof. I remember the pain caused by the taking of my innocence in the lie of the name of love.

All the memories rush in on me at once, they threaten to overwhelm me. I try to sustain a thought in my mind, to hold the memory long enough to see the truth. And I feel ashamed. I don't want to let this part of me be seen.

I want to know why God? Why must I go to this place? Why do You want me to pour out these memories?

I know, if it hurts, if tears fall, then a wound has not been healed. So I wait on the Lord. I am reminded of my husbands' words about a preacher who had fallen into sin. He preached “Deal with your sins privately or God will deal with them openly.”

“Are these memories my sins? Are these thoughts against You?”, I ask God. “Is this why You want them out in the open? Have I not dealt with them privately? Have I not dealt with them publicly as well?”

Like a gentle summer breeze I hear God speaking, “This shame is not for you to hold onto.” So I cry a while. I don't like to cry, I feel so vulnerable when I cry. But I let tears fall anyway, there is no one here to see my tears.

I draw in a deep breath, and I wipe away the tears. And I say, “You are in control, I don't need to understand what You are doing to trust Your love.” I take another deep breath and I listen to my memories.

I can hear my mother's voice strong and clear declaring over me; “He doesn't really love you, he just wants to get back at me for hurting him.” And I hear my father say, “She doesn't care about you, you should know that by now.”

How can one see the truth in the midst of memories recalled in broken suffering?

I hear the voices over the sweeping waves of emotions that come with these painful words. They were words meant to hurt the other, but they were words that tore me apart. Their love for me was conditional. If I would side with them then they would love me.

And right here, in this moment, in this memory, God gently shows me His unfailing love for me. His love for me has always been and always will be unconditional. He loves me because it is in His nature to do so. Not for anything I have or ever will do correctly.

When faced with a choice of conditional love, I remember choosing against them both. I remember the day I said, “I don't need their love. I don't care anymore.”

I did not listen to the voice of God, the voice that has been speaking to me since before time began. Instead, I believed their lies. I believed I was unlovable, I believed I was unworthy of their love without condition.

It was not the first time I had felt their withdraw of love. Children have this uncanny ability to record the deep and painful facts of life so perfectly, but we are horrible interpreters of that information. As an adult I “know” that my parents loved me, in the best broken way they could. But I could not accept the conditional love that they had to offer me. I could not endure the pain of their rejection so I chose not to feel anything.

The memory of that day, is seared into my mind forever. That was the day the judge decided to give my father custody. I don't remember the name of the man who would change my life forever, I doubt it was ever told to me.

I do remember constructing an invisible wall around me though, it was September 1982 and I was just seven years old, but I can see that wall as high and as deep as the Great Wall of China even now in my imagination. I can see those stones as real and tangible as if they were made of actual slate and marble.

I spent the next eight years learning how to build up that wall, and to fortify it. It's not as hard as you might imagine. Once your heart becomes cold to the idea of ever being loved you just become numb. Of course, that numb holds its own baggage that in some ways were far worse than if I had simply allowed myself to fall apart.

Control was a big part of that wall I constructed. Me remaining control of my own life, of my own emotions was of paramount importance to me. I credit my inability to give up control of any aspect of my own self to my restraint in relation to substance abuse.

In my childhood and teen years I was surrounded by any manner of drugs, readily at my disposal, and the allure to escape this dysfunctional life was a huge pull, had I not been in such need to keep control of my world I may have gone down the road that so many follow.

Though it was not a happy life it was, at least, a predictable one. But that life had no room for a loving God. It had no room for an identity different then the “Worthless” and “Unlovable” labels that had been affixed to me.