Daily Delight
“But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much He loved us by sending His one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through Him” (1 John 4:8-9, NLT).
I was reminded of this during one of those conversations you find yourself pacing back and forth, verbal processing out loud to a friend. I’ve never witnessed a completely healthy relationship I told her. The relationships around me growing up were messy and complicated. I was looking to them to inform me, but in a way I felt a little cheated. How am I supposed to recognize real love when I’ve never seen it?
This friend texted me after we hung up, “I was thinking about how you said that you didn’t know what healthy love looked like, but you do. It’s perfectly laid out in the truest form of self-sacrificial love - Christ dying for us. Don’t feel alienated because you don’t feel like you have a clear picture of what it looks like to love and be loved in this earthly life, because literally no one does.”
The relationships we experience or witness on earth may include brokenness, rejection, deceit and hurt. God’s love is different. Radically different. God is love. God’s love is unconditional, He doesn’t love us because we check all the boxes on His checklist or even because we are loveable. He’s not going to wait over 24 hours to text you back, or play “hard to get.” This is the one relationship where a DTR is not necessary.
I placed an unsaid standard on myself, that I was expected to redeem what didn’t work in my parent’s relationship. I’m not sure when it got into my head that relationships require perfection, that there was a guidebook on earth that presented the perfect plan to avoid failure. I bought into the lie that I couldn’t know love without first seeing the representation of a “healthy” relationship on earth. We know love when we know God. You are deeply loved and valued without ever witnessing or experiencing “the perfect relationship” on earth. Without a weekly date night or a perfectly functioning family. We are not called to have perfect relationships. We are called to love and be loved. God loves us beyond all reason and in turn we love each other because He loved us first.
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Photo: @briannabroyles
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Amy Werner
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Amy grew up near the mouth of the Appalachian trail in a northeastern town in Georgia. She now lives as a writer and science nerd in our nation’s capital, navigating life as a 20-something obsessed with finding sanctuaries in nature on the edges of the urban hustle of D.C.
This new transition to D.C. has been a season of learning a posture of surrender and peaceful silence found with God even amid the noise of cultural expectations and standards.
Amy is passionate about seeking justice, finding faith in all of life's details and championing young women to see and appreciate their divine value and worth. Amy loves stories, campfires, donuts and strong friendships, often the combination of all these elements equals her happy place.
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