You Are Loved

To my dearest friend,

If there’s a symphony I can play to saturate your mind in, it would be an endless “you are loved–you are loved” on a forever repeated loop. Perhaps your current circumstances are telling you: ‘that’s a lie’. Thoughts that started small and faint stating how forgotten, unseen, or neglected you are, have been amplified to a magnitude you can no longer tune out. Their echo penetrates your every moment, leading you astray alongside, while your dragged on a wild goose chase longing to be seen, valued, and loved.

Perhaps you are one who finds yourself utterly forgotten by your spouse. Put on a back burner of a current project, pursuit, or worse; competing for your rightful title with addictions or sinful snares of adultery in all its forms. Justifiable reasons for bitterness, anger, resentment, or even hatred are invited in, one unjust act towards you at a time. The seeds of all those lies become deeply embedded in.

Perhaps you are pouring all of yourself out into your children, but no matter how hard you try, you just can’t get them to honor, or respect you. Daily disregarding all that you say, and do. Leaving you exhausted, in a cycle of yelling and threatening that you just can’t seem to end; leading to further despair, disappointment, and solidification that you aren’t worthy or capable of anything better after all.

Perhaps you find yourself with a parent, or in-law that at every turn tries to remind you of your place, your worth, only in direct service to them. Someone that highlights every insecurity and fault and  magnifies it under a microscope causing you to believe that your identity lies closely interwoven with their thoughts and words about your worth.

Or perhaps from the outside, you might have it all: the devoted spouse, the beautiful children, the loving parents, and all the comforts that secure finances can accommodate. But you find yourself fighting for every breath, drowning in your own metaphorical sea of anxiety, panic attacks or depression without knowing the source. Believing that you are broken beyond repair, and accepting that this life will just have to be a labor from one breath to the next.

It is possible that you are one who has felt the full affects of death– hell itself. As you uttered, whispered, and proclaimed words of healing, only to watch your beloved baby take its last breathe, with it taking your heart as well. Perhaps you even have another child, or another baby on the way, but you can’t seem to find your place, for you constantly find yourself outwardly living, while inwardly walking amongst the dead. Those nearest to you, have long since moved on, thinking that you should too, so you find yourself in a cave of sorrow, with no evidence of light or a way to crawl out.

Perhaps my dear friend you have known what it means to be someone’s beloved. Known what it means to love. You’ve enjoyed every season, every trial, every victory together. It wasn’t easy but through the test of time became those three cords not easily broken with the Lord. Only now you find your love has been separated between heaven and earth; waiting to meet  with your beloved, when you shall both marvel at the sun and moon reflected from Jesus face.

Perhaps dear friend of mine, you find yourself fighting back an avalanche of tears from pain. Another lump. Another scan. Another treatment plan. So much probing, poking, injecting, you’ve been through. The tears escape, running down your face as you ask “How long Lord? How much more pain can I possibly take?”.

Perhaps dear one, you fight a battle no one sees. As you come to baby shower after baby shower, holding, kissing, baby after baby, while crying out for your very own. You notice every baby ever carried or swaddled no matter where you go. Month after month looking for those two strips, only to hold your cramping belly, void of any life.

I can see why, my very dear one, heavens message of His great love for you, might not be getting through. These wounds and blows thrown at you, have had you beaten, laying on the road. It’s clear why you are unable to hear His approaching footsteps, with all of life’s planted seeds of doubt muffling the noise around you. Jesus seems far too distant than He is. But oh so loved one- Heaven is among you, quickly right beside you, scooping you into His embrace. Those hands, the very ones that reach towards you, they formed the stars, the moons, and galaxies many years before you. Yet those very hands, they reached towards the leaper, they healed every disease ever known to man. No one was ever forgotten, passed by, or overlooked by Him, not even a single sparrow, or a single hair of yours, not one.

Look up sweet friend, into the blazing eyes of His, and you will soon feel all those tears you’ve cried dry up. You’ll see right there and then, you weren’t for a single moment unloved by Him, neglected or passed by. The very ground you stand upon, was made so that He could walk with you, hand in hand.

But wait– your mind filled with doubt is screaming; “Eden is forever gone”. Yes, but please remember, a second and final Adam came, the One named Jesus who cried out with His dying breath “it is finished” as He saw you once again restored to Him.  On earth as it is in heaven He would say,  the veil separating you forever gone. Eden is not just physically around you, it is now within. So take His hand, and start walking side by side, you will find all that you could ever need in Him.