Living for love, sustained by love

We live for the things we love.

As we grow, the things we love change. When we were young, it may be spending time with friends, it may be seeking the approval of elders, it may be hobbies we enjoyed. As we move into the working world, we look for something we find worthy of the investment of our time. Sometimes we allow it to demand more of us than we are able to give. When we start to build a family, or have children, we struggle to give enough time to each of the things we love. We start to weigh what we love more and adjust the time we spend on each, knowingly or unknowingly.

But doing the things we love isn’t, by itself, enough to help uslive full lives, lives that we find fulfilling and worthy.

We are sustained by receiving love, be it from God or from the people who love us. The people who love us may care for us and make things physically work for us, like parents that let us live with them when we’re out of a job. Or spouses that help you shower as you lose your physical faculties. But if we won’t receive their love, it won’t keep us alive. We are often close-fisted and unwilling to receive God’s love when we didn’t earn it, yet it is the one thing that can offer us any assurance no matter the circumstances we are in.

Many people find something or someone they love, and work all they can to earn their love, only to find it unrequited. But love that comes at a cost isn’t love at all.

We work all we can, all we should (no more and no less), and give the results back to God and watch God turn it into whatever He wants it to be. Don’t place restrictions on what the results should be. Don’t wrestle things to look the way you want it to. God works in bigger ways, ways we don’t see till days/months/years later.

God loves us no matter what we did, no matter the outcomes of our work. That free love is the precious real love that our souls truly desire. We are just asked to be faithful lovers. May we see how God brings about His glory through our faithful work and His hand, shaping nature’s course in a way that cannot be predicted.

Permanence

Does the idea of permanence make you anxious or does it comfort you? I find I've been oscillating between the two when I consider my upcoming wedding. Sometimes it makes me feel so thankful and loved, that someone else would consider me worthy of loving forever, that someone else would consider me someone that he could live with. But sometimes it makes me anxious, are you sure, you can't reverse this and go back to your old comfortable ways you know? Today I was reminded of the similarities between this experience of being joined with another to that of coming to believe in Christ. They are both a step into a completely new season. They both involve abandoning a past life to move into a new normal. They both involve taking on a new identity and changing habits. They both involve making a promise and coming under a covenant that I don't know whether I can keep. Underneath all the uncertainty, only one thing remains: the love and faithfulness of God whatever comes, that our lives are still in His hands, and that He is the only one who can sustain us, both as individuals and as a couple.

Working more or less?

In a society where we are always told to work harder or that we just did not work hard enough, we become deceived in our assumption that if we work harder we can become whoever we want to be, regardless of whatever strengths or weaknesses we have been given. We are a society that sells the idea that we can make ourselves into whoever we want to be by sheer hard work.

Yet as I was thinking about how God tells us that He created us in our mothers wombs, He has a plan for each and every of our lives, I wonder whether the story of "My Life" is written by God or by my hard work. If it were truly written by God and I were to yield to His plans, to follow the doors that He opens and walk away from the ones He closes, perhaps my worry that "God must be mad that I'm not working hard enough" should become "God must be mad that I am working TOO hard" - so hard that I would look back on my life and give myself the credit for doing a good job, rather than giving God the praise for bringing me to where I am today.

A giant exercise of giving in
because everyone has opinions
everyone has a limit to how much they are willing to give
and it is so big a thing I can no longer be completely self reliant
because I am short on resources and just can't physically do it
and I have to ask for favors I don't know whether I can return
so I ask but try not to hope
and let things be

Nothing will go the way you planned it. But you can still enjoy yourself if you would allow yourself to.

engaged!

I want to remember this day. And I'm worried that my memory will fail me. Today I feel so loved in a foreign land, that it doesn't feel so foreign anymore. Like the first thanksgiving I had here. Like the Christmas that I spent here and that Daniel got to join in on. So loved that the whole family made it such a celebration and had everyone involved. That Oliver and Audrey dressed up and rehearsed it many times but still their stunned looks are what I remember. This dinner will probably be better than the wedding dinner because it was made by David's mom and dad. Beef, asparagus, clam chowder in sourdough bread, salad, and that awesome perfectly flaky and lightly seasoned swordfish. And all the children who were so excited and Elijah and Noah trying out Sugar Cane drink. Noah wondering whether it has happened, and then when I said yes I am going to be your aunt, he replied saying he can't wait for us to have kids haha. And all the extra desserts. And just everyone together.

The day I wish I could delete

Perhaps I should have seen it coming. because what occupies your thoughts eventually crystallizes into action. spend your time thinking about fried chicken trying to convince yourself that it is fatty and you will end up eating it. spend your time thinking about soup noodles you will end up wanting that instead. spend your time thinking about not having sex and you will end up having sex. spend your time thinking about purity and its importance and you will preserve it. spend your time thinking about building a new life, you will build it. spend your time thinking about how someone is out to get you, you will become convinced that he/she is against you. spend your time thinking about not having a baby, or not getting married, you end up doing the exact thing. spend your time thinking about repairing existing relationships and you will repair it. Every action is a consequence of a long time of mental preparation.

I'm sad because a baby kills all hope that things will return to the way they should be. Not in this lifetime. I'm sad because every step you take to pursue your happiness means your relationships with your family takes another painful stab. I don't think anyone of us want anything to do with the baby. I will always think your actions are silly. And I know you will spend the rest of your life trying to prove everyone else wrong. (because if someone said the same to me, I probably will set out to prove them wrong too)

But you can't redeem broken relationships by creating new ones, hoping they will be great, hoping they will keep you happy and distract you from the broken relationships. It will stay broken. It will remain a sore point. A thing you try to bury away. Relationships don't just happen to work. They take more effort than we are probably prepared to give. Broken relationships will take even more time and effort and many personal sacrifices to repair.

We live in a broken world, already broken by all of our own selfishness and personal pursuits and desires. It breaks my heart to see people I love contributing to that brokenness.