Love is not without.

 

Love is not without its challenges and its difficulties.  It is not without its ups and downs and it most certainly is not without its own pains and devastations.  Love is not without hardship.

 

Love is not without troubles, but love is also not without reward.

 

Love is not without hope and joy and fulfillment.  It is not without communion and community.  It is not without blessing.

 

Love is not without its graces and its freedoms.  Pain and trauma from life lived with broken people and their broken love argue that love is a risk— too big of a risk— and that it shouldn’t be gambled.  But the reward of love is always greater than the risk of it.

 

I’ve seen this played out time and time again in my life, yet time and time again, I question the validity of that statement.  Is the reward of love truly always greater than the risk of it?

 

Growing up in a broken home with broken parents, the hope of love became my only promise for escape. I held on to the vain hope that, one day, some wayfaring gentleman would wander upon my path and rescue me from the life that I was living.

 

I looked for him always: my grand rescuer.  If I was walking home from the store, I hoped that he’d pass me in his car and turn around immediately to come get me.  When I was out laboring to make my mother money, I prayed that he would happen into my booth for food and stay for conversation.  Every moment of every day, my mind was actively trying to work out how I would be rescued by some man, somewhere.  But every moment of every day for decades, he never came, I was never rescued, and I was always left alone in my circumstances.

 

After years of disappointment and years of fighting for myself, by myself, I became hard and cynical.  Calloused to all that was good, I gave up on almost everything except the dream of being rescued.

 

I created this seemingly indestructible shell.  I believed in freedom and liberation and believed that it would come at the hands of a man, but I was unwilling to allow that hope to continue to set me up for heartbreak when a man never came to set me free. The risk of love had become greater than any reward it could have brought.

 

I hid my desire for love and acted as if it didn’t exist.  That way, whenever disappointment came, I could act as if it didn’t bother me, and I could “manage” my emotions by compartmentalizing them and stuffing them below the surface.

 

Outwardly, I was bitter and untouchable, but inwardly, I craved love and affection and was willing to give up whatever was necessary to get it.

 

My hardship made me hard, but it never killed the small fire of hope in love that continued to burn throughout my life.  Although love never seemed to come, a small part of me always believed that it would.

 

Because of that small fire, I survived.  That glimmer of hope empowered me to keep trying to get out and get away from the hell that I was living in.  I was a child and there was no real way for me to escape, but in my mind, I reserved a special place of belief that a man could change that.

 

But because of that glimmer, I gave myself away.

 

My belief that a man would rescue me was partnered with a lifetime of abuse and neglect, which combined my hope and personal trauma into a toxic concoction of works-based love.

 

I believed that to retrieve this salvation love, I would have to give something in return.  So, I gave.

 

I gave whatever was wanted from me.  I gave my body and my time and my affection.  Every time I gave myself away, I believed that it was in support of the cause.  I believed that, by giving up parts of myself, I would gain the one thing I needed: freedom.

 

I gave myself away sexually, hoping that men would fall in love with my body and rescue me.  But I didn’t just give my body away— no; I gave everything away.  I gave my intellectuality away, praying that someone would latch on to my bright wit and know that I was worth investing in because one day, I would be someone.

 

I gave away my resources, spending every bit of my time and money and energy in the hopes that someone would yearn for my pure and selfless heart and take me away from my awful circumstances.

 

I gave away my individuality, hoping that, by conforming, I could finally belong to something other than my own pain and tragedy.

 

I gave myself away because I believed that a rescuer would come, but he never did.

 

On the verge of hopelessness, I made my bed in despair and was all but willing to give up.

 

Then he came.

 

My knight in shining armor, the one that would finally save me from my distresses, my father— he came.

 

At sixteen, he rescued me out of the den of death I was living in, and I thought that it was the end of my story.

 

Years of waiting for boyfriends or teachers or strangers to rescue me fell through, but my father didn’t.  He was there to save me.

 

My years of dreaming and quiet believing in a savior were recognized and I thought that I would finally step into my happily ever after.

 

But my father was just a man.  He was a broken man, and he couldn’t be who I needed him to be.

 

I had built up this idea of a savior in my head, imagining bravery in the face of adversity and endless love that kept me close, but that wasn’t what laid before me.  There was no unconditional love.  There was no peace in freedom.  There was no freedom.

 

A man ensnared by his own devices left himself trapped and left me trapped with him.  My father wasn’t what I needed.  No one was.

 

So the little part of me that had believed in hope of true peace and freedom for so long started to wilt and die in the elements.  Strong winds of doubt tried to snuff it out and wild storms of disappointment tried to quench the flame.  For so long, I had believed in a rescuer and it was becoming apparent that my rescue would never come.

 

When I had all but given up, I met Jesus.

 

My first interaction with the Savior was while watching The Passion of the Christ.  There was a moment when the man stepped out of the crowd and was made to carry the cross for Jesus that I realized something.  I had never truly been loved before, and the Man who loved me was a Man that I didn’t even know.

 

I didn’t know Him, but I knew that He was the answer.

 

All the men and women before Jesus failed, because there was no possible way that they could love me the way that I needed to be loved.  This wayfaring stranger though, this Jesus, was a man that I knew could save me.  But I was afraid.

 

I was fearful.  The pathway to salvation in Christ Jesus looked like one of slavery rather than one of freedom.  Loving God and being loved by Him looked like being tethered to a pole and begrudgingly pushed into whatever commandment the Lord wanted to give.

 

My broken perspective of God led me to believe that God’s love was not genuinely love, but rather, control.  I believed that, by naming God as my rescuer, I would be freed from the life that I was living in but trapped in another that I didn’t want to live.

 

I saw rules and restrictions and standards that I couldn’t meet.  I saw my inability to climb the totem pole because there was no pole: in the Kingdom of heaven, everyone was equal.

 

Lingering fears from my works-based mentality scared me into thinking that I would never be enough. If my works didn’t count for anything or make me better than anyone else, then I would never be able to work my way out of the worthlessness that I felt.

 

Everything about Christianity seemed so narrow and so binding.  It didn’t look like freedom… it looked like a painted prison.

 

When I looked at Christianity, I saw expectations that I could never fulfill and righteousness that I could never achieve.  When I looked at my freedom, all I saw was a prison.  It looked different than the prison that I was already in, but at the end of the day, it was still a prison.

 

So, I ran from it.  I ran far away and fast.  But no matter how far I ran, I couldn’t escape the nagging feeling of supernatural love flowing from the heart of Jesus.  That stranger loved me more in a single day than I had been loved in an entire lifetime.  I simply couldn’t escape it, so one day I stopped trying.

 

Choosing Jesus felt like falling into Him.  It felt like falling into pure love. Suddenly there was a passion for life and purpose that filled every part of my being.  Scars of old and stress from the past were lifted and I finally felt like my life was worth living.

 

What my father didn’t have, and my boyfriends didn’t have, and what men didn’t have was all found in Jesus.

 

Falling into Jesus was the most freeing thing that I had ever experienced.

 

For the first time in my life, I was safe.  For the first time in my life, I was loved.  For the first time in my life, I was truly set free.

 

Sex didn’t save me.  Conformity didn’t save me.  Running away from my problems didn’t save me.  Jesus saved me.

 

The life that I brushed off as narrow and restricting was one of complete freedom.  I wasn’t forced to agree with anything, I was empowered to choose.

 

In my walk with the Lord, I have never been made to do anything— I have always been asked.

 

The terrified eyes I once saw Christianity through were opened with spit and with clay.  Christianity wasn’t about rules and religion; it was about relationship.

 

God hadn’t made a list for me to follow step by step in order to receive His love.  He didn’t neglect me when I fell short or made a mistake.  He didn’t walk away when I was difficult or disagreeable.

 

God wasn’t my parents.  He wasn’t my old flames.  A relationship with Him was unlike any relationship that I’d ever had.  No failure would revoke His love.  No snappy comeback would cause Him to leave me.  No knowledge of my past would undo His affections for me.

 

God’s main goal was to love me, and by Him loving me, I was changed.

 

I walked into Christianity with the understanding that I needed to be purified, cleansed, and changed before I could receive the fullness of God’s love for me.  I now live in it knowing that I am loved no matter what.

 

You don’t have to be perfect.  You don’t have to walk the line without stumbling.  You don’t even have to walk anywhere near the line for the Lord to still call you His beloved.

 

There is nothing that you can do that can change the fiercely loyal love of the Lord for you.  Pastor or prostitute, you are free to be loved by God.

 

Christianity isn’t about change.  It’s about love.  When you are loved, you change.

 

Maybe your life doesn’t resemble what has been laid out in the Bible, but changing you is not the Lord’s highest priority.  Loving you is.

 

So come, however you are.  This love is not one of forceful submitting or helpless control.  This love is one of choice and freedom.

 

I risked a lot to find the love of God, but the reward that I found with it was one of unconditionality and one of eternity.

 

You are not trapped by His love.  This love is truly a love untethered.  You can come and go as you please, but I guarantee you this: if you truly experience this love, you will never walk away.