Grown up love is all kinds of magical. It’s hard. It’s committed. It’s relentless. It forgives so many times it loses count. It keeps showing up – in smile and in tears. It pushes through. It plows through the uncomfortable and messy. It disregards self and chooses someone else, regardless of how that someone will respond. It’s the real deal. It’s generous. It trust something else SO MUCH that it justifies this kind of love is worth it.

This concept of loving others with abandon has felt hard for this single girl. My lie – the one just for me – was that this was ok because once I got married I’d love that guy with full abandon because FINALLY I could expect someone to love me and not leave me. I promise, this is not a pity post because writing that last line felt all kinds of pitiful. It’s just how I’ve managed my expectations (i.e. a coping mechanism or filter to not be disappointed)

I have great friends, but grown life pulls us all (me included) in a million directions. The truth is when we surrendered to the God dream, we didn’t get the option to request we stay in safe quarters next to those who feel like home to us. But, sometimes our heart just wants comfort. It just wants to be held. It just wants to be ok and our head cannot reason our way out of not having someone next to us – no matter how valid the reasons stacked up are.

Loving Big is hard. It hurts like hell to love and let go. It’s indescribable until you keep writing out passes to others letting them off the hook – not so you can be run over, but so you can be free. So you can be more gracious than expecting. So you can love well and trust that for every time life feels like it’s failing me, I can have access perfect love that is everlasting. Perfect love that never runs out.

I have to discipline myself to want his love more than others. I get so distracted sometimes.

But loving big brings healing and life though. It reminds us that this life isn’t the real deal. We’re not loving big here so we run out, but so we together run to the next one. So this side of heaven catches all the glimpses possible of what’s ahead on the other side.

Fullness of joy

Fullness of peace

Wholeness on the inside regardless of how broken the outside may be

That’s my favorite miracle to live out on this earth. No matter what the outside looks like, God’s power and presence can still make a miracle out of the inside.

When our insides are strong and deeply rooted in the right things, the hold people have on us dissolves. We can stay after we should have been offended. We can see through wounds and reactions to find the roots and real reasons. We become victors for the powerless when someone else’s coping mechanism doesn’t deter us to stay a while longer. The outside becomess powerless, because the inside is our mission.

It’s the best kind of love I’ve found.

Love Big today! People need to know the when God says he is Love – it is his perfect love that cast out all fear and that we are representations of His love because of our encounter with him – that this is the love they have been looking for. Because we’re not seeking them to love us but to discover His love for them. The greatest of love. The lasting love. The love that changed it all so He could know them.