23
August 2004
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If
you're a regular Oprah viewer than you know that she's
done a few shows with Wynonna Judd about her struggles with her
weight. I've always liked Wynonna, because for one she doesn't
hide her feelings or opinions about anything, which means she's
never hidden the fact that she's a Christian. In the second interview,
which just reaired last week, she made the point that her whole
life she's been trying to make people love her, to fill up something
in her that's empty. She desperately looked for that unconditional
Of course this is a common theme in secular holistic medicines and therapy and Whitney Houston songs, that the love you seek is self-love, or inside you all the time etc. That you can't love without loving yourself, and while all of that is certainly true, I don't think that is the kind of love what Wynonna was referring to. When she sang the song "I Want to Know What Love Is," that goes on to say 'I want you to show me," she wasn't singing it to her husband or her mother or even to herself. She was singing it to God. Because there's no one who loves you, or can ever love you, as much as He does. That's just the truth. No one. Not your mother or your spouse or your child. And believe me, my mom loves me a lot, and still, I know that it's just a drop compared to the ocean of love God has for me. To think about it is humbling. It's humbling, amazing and awesome, because the best part is, I didn't have to do anything to get it. I didn't have to be the best child or get straight As or be a size 8 or laugh at his jokes. Nothing. He just loves me. And who I am? A liar, a cheat, a sloth, a whore. No love is higher, no love is wider,
no love is deeper, no love is truer There's a reason we equate God with a father figure - parental love is the only kind that we can even begin to compare it to. If I treated my friends the way I have often treated my mother, I would have none. And if I treated my mother the way I have treated God, I would be an orphan. What shall I gain from his reward?
I cannot give an answer I know it makes some people uncomfortable, or angry, at the assertion that they can't get that kind of love or fulfillment from their spouses, but I'll maintain it's truthfulness forever. You can't count on fallible humans to fill you up. You just can't. If you could, there wouldn't be such an insane divorce rate. If people were able to forgive the way the divine forgives, families would never break apart and friendships would never cease. And I'm so thankful that this year I finally figured it out, because I could very well be looking at a life of singlehood. But even if I meet someone tomorrow and we end up married in six months, it's still a lesson I'm glad to have learned, because single or alone, my inherent loneliness would never have been satisfied. The abstract feeling of abandonment that we can't shake, even when we're sitting in a room with our best friends is that crack in our hearts that I've come to learn is the human condition - the consequence of the fall. We sinned, we were separated, and through His great mercy we are again allowed to know true love. It's so awesome! And
in my exuberance, I try to remain ever humble and grounded, because
from experience I've seen the crazy fake Christian happy and how
off-putting it is. But when you meet someone who has truly experienced
forgiveness and When my friend Mo and I met it was her crazy, outgoing personality that drew me to her; that she would take any dare and made me laugh like no one else. But what will keep us friends for life isn't our ability to dance all night or hold our liquor or be crazy 24-year-olds. What will hold us together are our mutual respect and my awesome desire to follow her and see where this new Road Less Traveled will take her, and hope that I can learn from her wisdom. I once told her that though it seems crazy when I say it out loud, that in much the same way I can't imagine anyone's mother loves them as much as mine loves me, I also can't imagine that God loves anyone as much as He loves me. Because only I know how truly sinful and ultimately unworthy I am. She laughed and said that she has the opposite pride - she can't imagine anyone loves God as much as she loves Him. And I hope that she feels His love for her the way that I do, and I can only hope to learn to love Him as fiercely as she does. I hope that's something that we all can learn to do. It sounds naïve, but oh can you imagine? If we all felt so filled up, so loved, that it erased all desperation! That young girls would stop sleeping around and men would no longer turn off their emotions and shut down. Children would never act out and the elderly wouldn't die of loneliness. It used to be that my breath would catch and my pulse would go up and my head would spin when I thought about spending the next 50 years of my life without a partner. And I'm not so past it that it doesn't make me sad to think about, but that's mostly because it's not what I planned for myself. I also realize that it sounds dramatic for a 28-year-old to be pondering her spinsterhood, but I would be foolish in this day and economy to not plan for a single life. All of You is more than enough for
all of me It hit me a few months ago - what does it matter if no man ever loves me when I'm loved by the greatest man to walk the Earth? What's the point of lamenting a broken heart when I have been fully healed? And I had to laugh at myself - at my dark thoughts and desperate longing for a man's love, because really, it's ridiculous. And maybe that was the lesson that He was waiting for me to get before providing me with my greatest Earthly desire. And maybe it wasn't. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Take my life, and let it be consecrated,
Lord, to Thee. The notify knows about Weight Challenged.
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