courage to love

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” -C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves 


I pray always for the strength to be vulnerable, the courage to love with abandon, knowing full well that my reward may be heartbreak. That is unconditional love, that is the cross, that is Christ who died for those He foreknew would reject Him, would walk away from the love-adoption He offered. That is the naked vulnerable heart of the Creator of the universe placed in my hands. 
Oh give me grace to love like that. 

redemption is stories to tell

     "I'd rather know a hard truth than a pretty lie, because until you know the truth you can't do anything about it," I said in my innocent resolve to go to dark places with Jesus' light. And then, to my horror, God took me seriously, and in one year my pretty illusions were stripped away, and I was broken over the truth.
      I wanted to cover me ears and weep; for innocence lost and stolen joy, for how like truth the whispers of a forked tongue feel, for how those whispers feed on silence and grow shame.
      And yet, I hold to my naive resolve, because uncovered to light darkness is dispelled, secrets spoken banish shame, scars bared can finally heal.
      Because I believe wholeheartedly in a God who kisses our scars, I cling fiercely to the hope that "maybe redemption is stories to tell, maybe forgiveness is right where you fell." 
     I feel the brokenness and mourn the pain, but I see first hand the redemption of broken stories told, the gift of going second in someone else's life, the glory of a God who is not content to remove the scars, but uses our darkest places to bring light, freedom from shame to another soul.