Luv

Go read this article.

Momastery

I don’t agree with everything here 100%. (Spoiler Alert : I never agree with anything 100%) but good grief, the world needs to hear this. When I think of the lives that have been ruined because one person lost their warm, fuzzy feelings about the person they vowed to love forever I want to take a hostage.

#11

You don’t need shiny. You just need REAL.  You understand now that that butterfly chasing is a shallow waste of a life. Because BUTTERFLY CHASERS NEVER SETTLE INTO REAL LOVE. REAL LOVE IS NOT A FLUTTERY FEELING, IT’S NOT BUTTERFLIES. It’s not pink. It’s not glittery. It’s not fluffy. It’s not even all that exciting, on the surface. Love looks like work. It’s utterly intimidating and exhausting. REAL LOVE IS A DAILY DECISION TO GET TO WORK. LOVE IS WORK DONE BY TIRED, HOPEFUL, ORDINARY FOLKS.

There are days that my love for Kevin overwhelms me.  I look at him and think of all we have built between us and I want to die from love.  I have butterflies.  I get goosebumps.

There are other days when I want to hit him in the head with a shovel.

I don’t love him any less on the days that I am eyeing the yard tools.

And honestly I have no idea what this looks like during a twenty, thirty or forty year marriage.  But in the end that’s the point.  It’s not about how long you have been ‘in love’.  It’s about a covenant not grounded in how we ‘feel’.

 

Mondays

Just realized that I posted Bible Tuesday on Monday.  Let’s roll with it people.  It’s just that kind of week.

November 2012

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Book Review – Redeeming Love


I had to reread this book. I read this the first time right after I became a Christian. I loved it. In fact, I loved it so much that for the next ten years anytime someone asked for a book recommendation, I demanded that they read this. I loved it so much that anytime somebody told me they were reading it or they had just finished reading it, I would squeal like a 7 year old girl and clap my hands together in glee. In short, this book made me believe that Christian fiction could be good. Unfortunately, I have suffered through a lot of Christian fiction since then that was pretty awful. I’m just not a fan of Amish love stories and that is about 75% of today’s Christian fiction.

Summer had just begun. The kids were driving me nuts. I spied Redeeming Love on my dusty bookshelf and dove back in. The surprising thing was that I remembered so little of the book. I hate that. I remembered the basic plot and theme but the details had completely abandoned my brain.

Here’s the basic story. Angel is a child prostitute who grows up and moves West. Michael Hosea is a farmer. God tells Michael to take Angel as his wife. He does. Angel is pretty screwed up (as you would expect) and she just cannot receive love. She keeps running away. Michael keeps going after her.

When I read this the first time, I understood a few things. I had a rudimentary knowledge of the book of Hosea from the Old Testament. I knew that Michael represented God and that Angel represented all of us. But I wasn’t spiritually mature enough to let the impact of this story tear me to shreds.

To be redeemed…

We, as Christians, throw that phrase around all the time. We sing about it. We write about it. But I don’t know if we really accept it. Because to accept it fully we would have to try, somehow, to comprehend the totality of God’s love for us. We view love as a conditional agreement. God just doesn’t.

Reading this book gives you a glimpse of what God’s love for us looks like. It opens your heart to the possibility that you are worthy of love no matter how often and egregiously you have screwed up. You will be different after you read it. You might also sob loudly so maybe try not to read it at the community pool. People will look at you funny. Trust me on this one.

Quoted – The B-I-B-L-E Edition

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

Isaiah 5:20