Stand Behind That Wall, Please! ;) Thaanks!

I was that little girl at the park that loved to exuberantly ask everyone, "Do you want to be my friend?!" Without words, this did not just mean, "Do you want to go play?!", but it meant, "Come! Be my friend! I have kindness for you! Let's go on an adventure!"and off we'd run! Sometimes they'd say no and I would say, "OK! If you change your mind, I'll be over there!" Usually, they would shyly inch over there or stare until I waved them over and they'd run over, since that's what they were contemplating anyways! There was no judgement there! We could say goofy sounds that meant nothing or say that I picked a booger and we would laugh to our hearts content! Even if someone said, "Eww!" it was still funny and we both knew we were in a safe place!

We were probably all on one side or the other of that scenario when everything was pretty simple and you loved or wanted to be loved!! There was no status, no facades, no walls because we just didn't know better yet!

I love to watch this in my two year old now! Toddlers may have to be taught to share and be kind, but they don't know how to go after a friendship for complex manipulation or to befriend you to gain something they are missing inside only to soon try to upgrade when it does not work! They do not think, just yet, of how to sabotage a relationship of someone they love so they can gain the trust of someone else or because someone breached the comfort zone of their heart! They don't know how to fill their gaping holes and hurting places with friends like a drug in subconscious hopes that it will fill them up and numb the pain! They just want to play, explore, love, and be loved! What happens to that?!!

Sin... Pain... Rejection... Selfishness... Fear...We all learn as the thorns of this world invariably rip our heart to pieces by other little hearts that are hurting too or even by other little people that have not been loved enough to be imparted the attributes of life giving friendship, that we had better learn fast to toughen up or even become what has hurt us!

Sometimes those thorns even gnash at our tenderness from siblings, parents, or loved ones, yet in these very first encounters of what love and a safe place should be rooted in, there is no truth to be found! There is no life giving love to be taught and only lessons of betrayal and love you must deserve are handed out like tainted sunglasses that carry a skewed view and chart an early path of untruth and destruction! Sometimes, it's even a life long journey trying to fit every puzzle piece into our hearts to fill this love need, but all the knock offs eventually fail and only further break our hearts!

The definition of that path and the shapes of the puzzle pieces all look different for all of us, but what is the same is that the only thing that our love is made perfect in is HIS LOVE! Invariably, we are all affected by the muck and stain of our sin filled world and we need the Father initially for His salvation, but what we sometimes don't realize is that washing us of our sin is also washing us of the affects of sin! We can't do it on our own and that's why we, just like Paul wrote, do the things we hate! That's why we promise to ourselves that we will never ever do something again and yet we do! We fall harder and harder and it springs back stronger the harder we pull just like a rubber band that only stings more the harder you stretch it!! Salvation from our thoughts and the renewing of our mind only comes by the reading of His word as we dig deeper into the Father! We overcome by His blood that was paid and as we proclaim His testimony in our lives as living worship! When it wakes you up like refreshing waters, you feel like you take a huge deep breath after you forgot to breath for a while or when you couldn't take a breath because you were under water!!

See, I lost that little girl! She's still there with a heart that loves to reach out to others and do what she was made to do! I love to open a window and pour out His love! I love to reach out and impart the beauty God has designed a sweet girl with who just can't see it! I love to laugh like there's no tomorrow and share my greatest struggles as He crosses my path with others, but what happens when I know that someone is breaching the wall around my heart?! What happens when I'm sitting there and I realize I forgot in my joy and God given friendship that I accidentally opened the door and not a window?! What happens when I know God is drawing me to a life giving friendship in answer to a prayer and they remind me of someone who stomped on my precious gift of love because I was too stupid to see their true motives?! How do we walk the line of wisdom and not throwing our pearls to swine, yet impart His love to this world through the only true means, our heart!

Oh, the levels of TRUST He calls me to higher and higher! You see, He's showing me how to listen to that whisper and follow that peace! He's showing me that He mends my heart even if I miss that voice! In pain and much to Satan's joy, I built a wall that when seen through the eyes of truth, is really a prison with bars! I thought this wall would protect me! I finally said, "I don't know why people hurt me and use me, but they won't do it again! I will protect me!" and, brace yourself, I said to my sweet, sweet Father, "I did it your way and I am a puddle of pain! It failed! It didn't work! See?! This is more than I can bear! This turn the other cheek stuff means everyone can treat me however they want! I am protecting me now!" I know, it's painful to write and so painful to remember, but even as I do He says, "It is gone! My daughter was hurting! You never asked me to leave and I never did!" See! I have no words for that awesomeness! I truly stand in awe! I throw Him rejection and He stands by me in love, carries me in His arms, and nurses me back to health! He knew I was lost in pain and He answered my call! His love is so much more that we can ever conceive or wrap our human minds around!

Now, one by one, with every request to follow Him in love, receive love, and give my love whole heartedly, He says, "This one, can I move this brick away here?" I answer Him, more and more easily and ,with trust, I am learning from Him to say, "Yes! please do!" Guess what?! Those bricks didn't protect me! They blocked me from the fullness of His blessings, love and joy!! No arrows are coming through where my bricks once were! He is trading my heavy bricks for His wisdom and blessings and I feel like dancing! I feel like that little girl because when He says, "Now sweetie! Let's dance!" I know I can trust Him and I answer to my Daddy! "Yes!! Yes!" Dancing is so much more fun than shackles and bars and loneliness behind a self-made wall!! Dance! When He asks in His love, answer in trust, "YES!":)

LIVIN LOVE!!!:)

Livin' Love!

A calling?! A direction?! A command?! A highest honor! A gift bestowed as a crown!

Every time I hit my knees or my face, well, quite often my face, He whispers back to me" LOVE!!" I'm like, "Huh?! LOVE?! Well, they are the ones with the baditude!"(what I love to term a bad attitude) or "He's the one I'm prayin' for you to FIX!!" Sometimes I just want answers to what is a very real need that He cares very much about, but His answer always encompasses that answer, "LOVE!"

So, in my youth, I thought,"I GOT it, LOVE!" I'll be loving TOWARDS this person or that when I'm around them! Check! Ok, let's move on, but He just loved me oh too much to leave me there!! Such is the beautiful dance of living a life in Him!

As a very young child, LOVE was forgiveness! LOVE was forgiving those I loved and trusted, yet broke my heart and spirit! LOVE was releasing the pain that originally crushed my heart and choosing to feel the pain all over again to receive peace! Yet, as He whispered to me then too, "Let it go so it will not become YOU! Give it to me and you will never become what you hate!" I didn't even understand that then, but I remember pulling at my hair because of the pain and struggle it took to give Him back all these things that were bigger than me and certainly beyond what I could carry! I only knew that I would not choose to become them! I would not choose to repeat them! I would not choose to feel that forever! So, I used to picture myself, picking myself up, dusting myself off, handing him my rage and pain, and starting all over again!"Today is a new day! Today I choose to walk in Joy!"

In the midst of this ongoing walk, LOVE became trust! LOVE became not asking, "Why?!!!!" to put it sweetly! It became the image of letting Him wrap His huge wings of trust around my broken, confused heart while I grieved when my father became sick and I believed with all my heart that he would never die! We all did and to this day, I know that I probably will never know, this side of heaven, why he had to leave! I adored my father like I adore the FATHER! He held my heart in His hands and I was the apple of his eye! I hung on his every word! His every glance was LOVE! He was firm and never swayed by emotion when he knew in LOVE He must discipline, but He always walked in LOVE towards me! I'm sure he got frustrated at some time, but he was the epitome of LOVE to me!! Then, like a life stealing, heart clenching storm, he was gone! It was forever, to me! "He's in heaven with the angels, sweetie!" just felt like he abandoned me! Yet, my mom told us over and over and over, "Yet, will we praise Him! As for me and MY house, we will serve the Lord! " So, she did, and we followed! We followed her on the path of LOVING trust and He was oh so faithful!

LOVE lesson: time to grow! He has never let me get away with hate! Every time I secretly hated or even deeply disliked someone, there they were in my face, up in my grill, over and over and over and over like a flippin' broken record!! So, here we are again, LOVE is LOVING all!! LOVING the unlovely, the annoying, the party poopers, the shy, the wall flower, the bully, the gossiper, the RUDE, the deemed "time wasters"! Yes, it is an ugly admission! Well, not only did I find out that I was a little too big for my bloomers and self-hated plaid uniform skirt, but I found out that those people were often the hurting, the needing, the crying , the beautiful, the called, the destined, the gifted, and the ones who changed me into LOVE! LOVE that saw the heart instead of personality, attitude, words, body language, tone, appearance! His LOVE that walked in GRACE!! I thought I was cursed with an annoying people magnet, but I was called with a destiny for LOVE with the gift of seeing His GRACE!

Tables turned and this firecracker girl who LOVED to shout Jesus from the mountain tops learned what it's like to fall! Learning to give grace-filled LOVE is one thing, but falling in the miry pit yourself is the LOVE of accepting GRACE when your walk pretty much bites! When I am ugly and covered and all can see my scarlet letter, when all I LOVE and live for comes crashing down around me because I broke my own heart, when I think that my sin can scar His image, I can truly understand the depths of His LOVE for me! I thought my sin disgraced Him! How could I ever forgive myself for breaking the heart of my Jesus?!I did not understand Him at all! I did not understand His earth quaking LOVE for me, in spite of me, and that it truly had absolutely nothing to do with anything I had ever done or not done! I never knew I actually thought I earned it! I never knew I thought I was somehow worthy until I was so painfully unworthy! I think it took that! I think when everyone in the world, so it seemed, felt great about stomping on the pregnant teenager, it took true forgiveness of myself and embracing of His true GRACE to lift my head up high and tell Satan to kiss my redeemed booty!!;)

Now, He takes me deeper or just deeper into His LOVE! Sometimes it feels like striping away or beating, but then I quit fighting Him or realize I'm playing the "I'm right because.." game and surrender to His gentle molding! We think it's going to be painful, but it's us that's pulling! He is oh so tender and LOVING! Not that tough love people love to refer to in their angry voice, but seriously, not one who delights in striking us with lightening for heavenly kicks and giggles!! He is FOR us! He DELIGHTS in us! He ADORES us! He too, hates the sin filled junk of this world that we live in, for this time, and desires to one day sweep us away! He desires to carry you, fight for you as your knight in shining armor, and never leave you or forsake you!

This, I learned when I walked through circumstances beyond my control! This, I learned when I begged,"Take this cup from me! I have no more to give!" This, I learned when only my loved ones could hold my arms and even show me where to set my faith for a hope of restoration! I learned to LOVE not just in actions, but to give my heart when I was too numb and broken to feel LOVE any more! I learned what it means to CHOOSE LOVE to put on LOVE like a painful outfit I knew I could not fill! In my numbness and my darkness, He guided me and I learned His LOVE carries me! His LOVE can even be like a cross I pick up daily out of LOVE for Him! He did not release me from a LOVE I was destined to forever be one with and when it was a thorn instead of a sweet rose, He became LOVE for me! I have always LOVED to LOVE, but now, I did not know who that person was any more, nor did I know if I ever would be that person again! I was just a leaf in the wind, clenching to Him and believing that He could make me more than enough for my kids!! I found out that the weak, mustard seed of faith that just said, "Here I am! I think all that I've ever believed has crumbled and all that I've ever hoped for is lost! Can you fix me?" It was not an overnight healing! I have experienced that, but this was a walk it out with Jesus kind of healing! I usually did not even know what exactly was wrong with my broken heart even long after my circumstances changed and the immediate source of the brokenness was miraculously restored! Still, He's that big! He was and is still Lord of all and He put the pieces back together in such a more beautiful way! I stood with Him in the storm with LOVE holding me up this time and I learned that LOVE is walking with Him, trusting in Him, forgiving others, forgiving yourself, giving Him your pain and rage, letting Him carry you back through it, riding out the storm, putting on your battle gear, laying down yourself, LOVING when you can't even feel LOVE any more! LOVE is He! LOVE is His all encompassing ability to be who we need Him to be, where we need Him, when we need Him! All in all, come just as you are because this journey, this destiny, this place is all about LIVIN LOVE!! So, here we go! Steppin' out of that boat on the water with Him!

LIVIN' LOVE,

Sach