life

So I began this year thinking that it was simple—love God and love others and live, simple stuff.

But the with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind part that I tried to hide in my mind in the simple Love Live slogan has come and slapped me in the face telling me don’t flatter yourself, it’s not that simple.

The concept of all is so profoundly comprehensive; with every fiber of your being. Loving God with all is true life, but it feels a lot more like dying.

I began the year praying that God would help me love him and others. I’ve failed already with the all your heart. God is too good at answering prayer.

Because love comes unexpectedly, inconveniently, like a plague, and my heart has been made weak with the devices of Shakespeare and Donne and Wordsworth and Keats and Sydney, history’s best, and growing up with three women and romantic comedies and Disney movies, all on one side against me, as if God wanted to see if I could put my heart in my mouth. I couldn’t. My heart has a hard time keeping up with my mouth.

But this past weekend God came to me when I was weak and defeated, my heart gasping through arteries clogged with hypocrisy and chambers full of thorns and rocks with holes letting in the cold. He looked at me, took my failing heart, saw all that it held, told me in a warming gaze he still loved me, healed every wound and gave it back to me, promising I know it’s hard, but I’m here, I’m alive, I’m here with you.

So I can only die, and live loving, and live a life worth living in loving him with my all because he lives, because he's here.

And the road ahead beckons.