“I love you this much” my husband said to me once, when we were dating, as he held his fingers close together like I am doing in the photo below.
“What the heck?!?” was my response, or something like it, if I remember correctly.
And then he proceeded to make a circular motion with the pointer finger of his other hand, as he added “all the way around the world and back.”
Awwww, right?!
❤️☝🏻🌎
Last night God brought this picture to mind again, just when I needed to hear it.
And I think maybe someone reading this needs to hear it too, so I’m sharing.
You see, I love God with ALL of my heart, soul, mind, and strength.
If God were to ask me to demonstrate with my body how much I love Him, I would probably answer like my three year old does when I ask him that question.
I’d open my arms as wide as I possibly could, stand on my tippy toes to make myself as “big” as possible, and stretch as far as I possibly could and I’d say just like my little guy does “Thiiiiiiiisssss Much!”
I don’t often try to demonstrate my love to God with body language like this.
But last night He revealed something to me about myself.
I have, often, tried to prove my love to him by demonstration.
“I love you so much that I’d give up drinking alcohol for you, God.” 🍷
“I love you so much that I’ll give up the job I loved, because you told me to.”
“What do you want me to do, God? How can I show you I love you?? I’ll do anything. I’ll leave any comfort zone!”
And there have been times
that He has led me to do some stuff,
forgive some people,
let go of some things I’d been clinging to,
get rid of some “security blankets”,
bless someone,
listen to and pray for people…
but those weren’t demands you see,
they were just opportunities that presented themselves, that I followed His lead in love in, and HE poured out love and Truth through me,
He gave me the compassion and forgiveness and love and desire in those moments.
They weren’t a trying or a setting out to do something special in order to receive His love. They were demonstrations of his love, overflowing FROM a FULL heart.
But you see I think He has been showing me lately that there has always been, in some measure or other, a separation in my mind between my relationship with Him and my “role” in His Kingdom- my “purpose” in life.
And I think He is showing me that I’ve been trying to make Him proud of me,
I’ve been trying to demonstrate my love to Him,
by stretching my “fingers”,
stretching my “arms”,
stretching myself
as far as I possibly can—
to reach big and reach wide
in intentional, planned works,
(and they’re good ones, don’t get me wrong, my intentions were and are good and pure, but my perception of Him and of how He needs to see my love were off.)
I’ve been the three year old saying
“Look, daddy! I love you thiiiiiiiissss big!
Did you see that?
Do you know that?
I need to know that you saw it and you felt it.
I need to feel that you received it,
that someone can understand this love that’s in my heart for you.
Did I speak your love language ok, God?
Did I love you and people well enough?
Did I serve well enough?
Did I say the words eloquently enough?
Did I spend enough time with you?
Am I spending enough time with them?
(I feel like I’m falling short somewhere,
there’s not enough hours.)
Did I hug the ones who needed a hug? Did the happy mail I sent get received with the full measure of love in which I mailed it out?
Or did I miss the mark?”
I think one of my biggest issues is fearing “missing the mark.”
Falling short.
Failing Him.
Failing someone else.
Having someone else fail to understand me.
And last night he showed me that
the times when I lack peace,
the times when I feel unsettled,
the times when I feel “in limbo”-
like the mail, the love, the words
have been sent
but I’m waiting to see how they’re received-
waiting to see if I’ve hit or missed the mark-
His heart-
I’m lacking in peace and feeling insecure because I’m SELF-conscious.
In these moments I’m looking not at Him but at me.
So what He said to me-
This visual He gave me-
was so simple yet so profound!
“Stop looking at the gap, Daylene.”
“Remember when your hubby first showed you he loved you that much, and you felt really startled, anxious and insecure because you thought he was telling you that this tiny little gap demonstrated all the love he felt between him and you?”
(Mmmm hmmmm. I did remember. But thankfully it didn’t last long before he elaborated and explained it to me… that his love for me was “from one finger, all the way around the world and back again.”)
“Daylene, in his mind the gap didn’t demonstrate the love. The entire world around it did!”
“I want you to hear this….
LOOK AWAY FROM THE GAP.
I LOVE YOU PAST THE HILLS AND VALLEYS,
DOWN THE RIVERS,
UP THE MOUNTAINS,
ACROSS THE OCEANS,
PAST THE ATMOSPHERE
FARTHER THAN THE MOON & STARS,
PAST THE SUN,
OUT OF THE GALAXY,
AROUND THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE,
and back again. And again. And again.
Forever!
(Like your Toy-Story boys have always said “To infinity and BEYOND! 💫)
My love for you is the “all the way around!”
Stop looking at yourself-
stop looking at our love-
as if there’s a chasm between us
a gap that you have to fill
with your good works.
Understand that I’m the beginning
AND the end,
That because you’ve taken Jesus as your Savior, there IS no gap to be filled!
No performance
No proving of our love required by you-
because HE already proved it!
And your part was simply to accept it
and let Him fill in that chasm that once was-
the gap between you and my love.
The gap has FOREVER been filled, Daylene.
There is not a thing you could do to make me love you any more! Infinite is infinite!
There’s not a thing that you
or anyone else could fail to do,
(outside of not accepting my son)
that would make me love you any less.
And even then I don’t love them any less,
they just don’t get to feel it,
because they haven’t allowed Jesus to fill that gap.
(Think of an electrical circuit and how energy flows only when the circuit is closed with no gaps.)”
❤️❤️❤️💡💡💡
It was as if the electrical circuit in my mind was closed! The gap in the circuit that I was trying to fill with grind, suddenly connected by a refreshed understanding of grace!
And a new understanding that grace isn’t just a new way of living (vs. grind)- it is also about a mindset! One that gets our eyes off of us and onto HIM!
And when we do that, we become SO FILLED with the current of His overwhelmingly, PURELY UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, that it charges us and our “purpose” (the one besides just being receivers of this love of His) – the outflow of it, through the channel of service and love and giftings we’ve been given—just POURS out!
And the worries about who received the overflow and how they receive it — the self-consciousness— are dimmed in the light of HIS love for us!
The SUN {SON} tends to overpower and “blind” us in the best of ways like that!
And when we understand that He loves others this same way too-
All our loved ones
like our spouses
and our kids
and all the people we feel responsible to lead to His love…
That He is measuring the love in their relationships with Him, by His Son
and NOT by their momentary levels of
progress
or closeness to the perfection
they’ll one day display in Heaven…
That He doesn’t look at their gap and say
They’re falling short here here and here.
You better teach them how to fill those places in.
NO- Jesus will fill those in.
Theirs AND ours.
Over time, as we simply walk with Him and do life with Him and Holy Spirit woos us in.
In knowing this we become
FREED
from the heaviness
of “helping them to heaven”…
(or getting our own self there.)
Freed to trust God
(even with our closest loved ones)
to do what only HE can do in them.
To let God be God.
And just be whatever He created us to be
in their lives:
Wife.
Mom.
Daughter.
Sister.
Aunt.
Friend.
Youth group leader.
Encourager.
But PRIMARILY…
FIRST, (so that we CAN flow out)-
HIS.
Simply His, Beloved.
BE. LOVED.
Share {His} Love.
Breathe because the gaps are GONE,
thank Jesus!
From Full 