30 Days Of Emotional HealthSýnishorn

In high school, I got wild, all-consuming crushes on boys I barely knew, and then drove my friends crazy by talking about it. All. The. Time.

“You know what? You’re in love with love!” an exasperated friend told me one day.

She was right—I was enamored with the idea of what it might look like to have a boyfriend, that happily-ever-after feeling portrayed in books and movies.

I craved the abstract. And on occasion when I’d actually go on a date with one of these “amazing” boys, reality would hit and I’d quickly lose interest. These weren’t fairy-tale princes but regular teenaged boys, after all.

Now, I’m happily married and enjoy real love with my husband. Yes, my heart still pitter-patters for him, but we also know what it’s like to nurse each other through the flu or get down-and-dirty cleaning the kitchen. We have an intimate, concrete, lasting love.

Lately, I’ve realized my relationship with Christ wasn’t always the same; I hadn’t taken that leap of faith to go from abstract love to concrete. I might have been a follower of Christ and a believer, but when I’d read Scripture and heard God say He died for us while we were still sinners (Rom. 5:8) and lavished us with love as adopted children (1 John 3:1), I imagined “us” or “you” represented humanity as a whole.

But Jesus proclaimed His love—to you and me—in John 15. He said He loves us just as the Father loves Him.

Here’s what I’ve learned: God loves me—the real me. Makeup free and vulnerable. He doesn’t love the “idea” of me, in the abstract way, but the true, raw, unfiltered, barebones, no frills soul parts. He loves even the parts I can’t mask or hide. He loves me so much that He died for me.

Yet I’d returned His love superficially, not the way He loves me. My surface-level heart stood in the way of the blossoming love relationship I know now that God sought me, His precious daughter, His Jessica, this whole time!

Just as He loves you.

~Susan Aken

Writer

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