"Marry your best friend," my grandmother told me last year. "It works best if you do it that way. That's what we did."
My grandparents celebrated 60 years of marriage yesterday. I love that I have grown up with that expectation as the "norm" surrounding me. In a world where so few people make it through life without divorce directly affecting them somehow, I am blessed and thankful to have seen up close what a real marriage looks like. You marry someone for who they are and who you are at the ages of 22 and 23, but you stay married to them for (or sometimes in spite of, or with hope that they will get past) who they are at 35, at 50, at 80. My grandparents have faced the ins and outs of 60 years of life together. They have survived, hand in hand, through times of war and peace, of sickness and health, of bearing three girls and, nearly half a century later, burying one. They have prayed together, gardened together, fished together, and traveled together. They have chosen, every day for nearly 22,000 days, to share life with each other and to honor the commitment they made to each other and to God.
That's what I want. I want, after decades together, after youth has faded and the realities of life have set in, to still go for a walk hand in hand with my husband every Christmas morning. There will be challenges. Anyone is a fool who believes falling in love is all that is required to establish and maintain a family. But I want to find the gold that comes on the other side of refinement. I want to fall in love and then to spend a lifetime choosing love and seeing the fruit of that choice.
Happy anniversary, Grandma and Grandpa!
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Friday, September 17, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Motivating factors
The best friends are the ones willing to hold a mirror to your life and challenge you to reach higher. In this manner, I came to a mindset-changing realization this morning (thank you, J).
My heart is for the Lord. I long to see His Kingdom lived out-- fellowship, love, justice, redemption, peace, and joy. This is the very beat of my heart. But somewhere along the line, I have become more focused on the antithesis of this. My mind has become consumed by my hatred for what is not of the Lord. At first glance, this doesn't seem like such a problem. Are hatred for the wrong and love for the right such different things? Don't they lead to basically the same actions? Perhaps, but the quality of life and character of the living are so very different.
Jesus, with a passion, hated what was wrong. But Jesus was never driven by hate. Hate was never the motivating factor of His actions. On the contrary, He knew the intimate details of right, He knew what good looked like, and He loved it. Knowledge and love of God's perfect Kingdom motivated His every word and action. If He grew angry at corruption and brokenness, it wasn't for their sake alone. It was because He KNEW perfection, and nothing else would satisfy!
I want to be driven by a love of God, not a hatred of Satan. I want to trade my cynicism about the way things are for idealism about how they can be. I want to trade my abhorrence of brokenness for the knowledge and pursuit of wholeness. I want to be running toward the light, not just away from the darkness. I want to know Christ in His perfection and let that relationship be the motivation for everything else I do.
Jesus, keep my eyes fixed on you and not on the raging seas around me.
My heart is for the Lord. I long to see His Kingdom lived out-- fellowship, love, justice, redemption, peace, and joy. This is the very beat of my heart. But somewhere along the line, I have become more focused on the antithesis of this. My mind has become consumed by my hatred for what is not of the Lord. At first glance, this doesn't seem like such a problem. Are hatred for the wrong and love for the right such different things? Don't they lead to basically the same actions? Perhaps, but the quality of life and character of the living are so very different.
Jesus, with a passion, hated what was wrong. But Jesus was never driven by hate. Hate was never the motivating factor of His actions. On the contrary, He knew the intimate details of right, He knew what good looked like, and He loved it. Knowledge and love of God's perfect Kingdom motivated His every word and action. If He grew angry at corruption and brokenness, it wasn't for their sake alone. It was because He KNEW perfection, and nothing else would satisfy!
I want to be driven by a love of God, not a hatred of Satan. I want to trade my cynicism about the way things are for idealism about how they can be. I want to trade my abhorrence of brokenness for the knowledge and pursuit of wholeness. I want to be running toward the light, not just away from the darkness. I want to know Christ in His perfection and let that relationship be the motivation for everything else I do.
Jesus, keep my eyes fixed on you and not on the raging seas around me.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Trusting God with the finish
In the weeks before I left Costa Rica (almost four years ago now), my heart broke as I watched the kids start to realize the time was approaching. I wanted them to know the depth of my love for them, to know that I would carry them with me through the rest of my life, to understand that they weren't just a summer to me. I would have stayed if I could, but that wasn't where God had me.
As we were leaving La Cuenca one day, Hugo turned to me and, knowing what I was thinking, said, "You just have to trust, because God tells us that we will reap what we sow. So every one of those kisses that you give the kids, every time you open yourself up and love them, those are seeds that will be planted deep down in their heart. And you have to trust that years from now, even though they might not remember all the specifics of who you were or what you did, they will remember that one time, someone really loved them. And that's the best legacy you can leave behind."
I don't like to start projects that I won't be able to see through to the end. If I can't fix a situation completely, I don't like to get involved. For a long time, this has kept me from pursuing the path closest to my heart. Don't get me wrong-- having the drive to stick with something to the end is a good thing. But there are some projects we won't be able to finish. There's a Jewish proverb about working for justice in the world that goes something like this: "The fact that we will not, in this lifetime, be able to finish the work, does not give us permission not to begin." I'm paraphrasing, but the point is there. If we refuse to try our hand at any good work for fear of failing, we are motivated only by selfishness, by the desire to maintain our own good name.
It is God's to see the work through from start to finish; we are to plant or water or reap as He calls us. We may not see the completion of it in our lifetime, but we will see more than if we never begin.
As we were leaving La Cuenca one day, Hugo turned to me and, knowing what I was thinking, said, "You just have to trust, because God tells us that we will reap what we sow. So every one of those kisses that you give the kids, every time you open yourself up and love them, those are seeds that will be planted deep down in their heart. And you have to trust that years from now, even though they might not remember all the specifics of who you were or what you did, they will remember that one time, someone really loved them. And that's the best legacy you can leave behind."
I don't like to start projects that I won't be able to see through to the end. If I can't fix a situation completely, I don't like to get involved. For a long time, this has kept me from pursuing the path closest to my heart. Don't get me wrong-- having the drive to stick with something to the end is a good thing. But there are some projects we won't be able to finish. There's a Jewish proverb about working for justice in the world that goes something like this: "The fact that we will not, in this lifetime, be able to finish the work, does not give us permission not to begin." I'm paraphrasing, but the point is there. If we refuse to try our hand at any good work for fear of failing, we are motivated only by selfishness, by the desire to maintain our own good name.
It is God's to see the work through from start to finish; we are to plant or water or reap as He calls us. We may not see the completion of it in our lifetime, but we will see more than if we never begin.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Submitting to love
"And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD's commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?"
Deuteronomy 10:12-13
The Bible, the Old Testament especially, can seem a little harsh at times. Repeated over and over again are commands that we will love and serve the Lord first and the Lord only, worshiping Him and obeying Him and honoring Him and following Him. Submission is not a concept of which I have always been particularly fond, whether to God or to another human being, but it's a concept I've started to understand a little more this year.
We are trained to want to be in control. In our ideal world, we call the shots and make the decisions and serve our own interests, and it's all about us. To submit would be to sacrifice that self-interest and to lose all of the benefits, right? Not necessarily. What if you were submitting to One who knew better than yourself what would be good for you? What if you were submitting to One whose love for you surpassed even your own self-love? What if submission to another's commands and laws and orders would actually bring you the most satisfaction and fulfillment?
What if the One we were submitting to looked something like this?
"To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the LORD set his affection on your forefathers and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations, as it is today. Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt. Fear the LORD your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name. He is your praise; he is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes."
Deuteronomy 10:14-21
Deuteronomy 10:12-13
The Bible, the Old Testament especially, can seem a little harsh at times. Repeated over and over again are commands that we will love and serve the Lord first and the Lord only, worshiping Him and obeying Him and honoring Him and following Him. Submission is not a concept of which I have always been particularly fond, whether to God or to another human being, but it's a concept I've started to understand a little more this year.
We are trained to want to be in control. In our ideal world, we call the shots and make the decisions and serve our own interests, and it's all about us. To submit would be to sacrifice that self-interest and to lose all of the benefits, right? Not necessarily. What if you were submitting to One who knew better than yourself what would be good for you? What if you were submitting to One whose love for you surpassed even your own self-love? What if submission to another's commands and laws and orders would actually bring you the most satisfaction and fulfillment?
What if the One we were submitting to looked something like this?
"To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the LORD set his affection on your forefathers and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations, as it is today. Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt. Fear the LORD your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name. He is your praise; he is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes."
Deuteronomy 10:14-21
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)