teach me that you love me.

I prayed these words over and over for a full two years of my life. I was so lost in my pain--so blinded to everything good and right and hopeful in the world. I was confused. I felt let down and left out by the God who claimed that He cared. I had given life my best shot and had come up short on everything. On joy, on peace and most of all on love.

My journals were wrought with questions. The tear-streaked pages were evidence of the desperate heart that desperately needed to be heard. Even now as I look back on those entries I cringe at the complete loss of sanity I experienced in the midst of the most turbulent season of my life. I truly cannot believe I made it through, and I am thankful to now be in a place where I can reflect thoughtfully on my past self.

However, what is most incredible about the ability to reflect is that I am now able to see the miracle that God was working all along. Yeah, I said it--miracle. Anyone who knew me over the last couple of years can attest that it is true. My life is a miracle.

Here's the thing--people always say that their hardest times in life are the times that they felt closest to God. Now, I wouldn't necessarily say that is always the case. There were times that I felt the Lord's presence in the darkest hours, but then there were also a lot of times that I didn't. In fact, there were times that I felt nothing but emptiness. I felt nothing but exhaustion. I felt nothing but sadness. I felt that there was no possible way that God gave a crap about my life, because the emptiness and exhaustion and sadness were so deeply penetrating and so unbelievably never-ending. No one told me that pain could be like that. That life could be like that. So void of hope and challenging in the most ridiculous ways.

Where was the God that loved me?

And so, that became my request of Him--teach me that you love me.

In my finances--teach me that you love me.
In my relationships--teach me that you love me.
In my job--teach me that you love me.
In my depression and fear--teach me that you love me.
In sickness and death--teach me that you love me.

I could go on. There were so many ways that I had given up on the Lord. So much bitterness and anger in my heart. So much doubt. I stopped believing. I stopped trusting. But I never stopped saying, "teach me that you love me."

I had to. I had nothing left. I think your body and mind get to a point of surrender where you stop fighting the way things are and give in to the process of pain. Its a strangely freeing experience--to know that there is nothing you can immediately do to change your situation or what you are going through. To confront the things that you have spent so much time running from. To ask yourself the honest questions--of yourself and God.

I would never choose to go back to that season. But I would never ask for it to be removed from my life either. Because here's the thing about it--God showed up.

Not in the sense that he wasn't there one day, and then suddenly appeared the next. I think its more that He was there all along, that He knew my heart and knew what I needed to get to the point where I am today. I was just too burdened and weary at the time to lift up my head and see him bowing low to meet my broken life.

I came across this verse in my old journal today. It was towards the end of my fight, right before I was to enter the joyful season I am currently in:

Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him full redemption.

Yesterday, I was talking to my housemate about what God meant to me, and I found myself saying these exact words: "I feel like I have learned to trust God with my whole life, because I know that He loves me and knows me far better than I know myself, and the peace I have in being able to rest in Him is well worth the wait."

Wait, I said that? Those words came from my mouth?

I have learned to trust in love again. I could not be more blessed, or more in love with life as I am right now. I feel whole, I feel healed. I feel this great big hope that I want to share with everyone, that I want to explode with because I feel it so strongly. I know deep in my heart that He loves me. I know that I know that I know. He has taught me in such a sweet way that could never be replaced or reproduced by anything other than what I have been through these past years.

Our God is real. He is unfailing in hope, fully redeeming in love, and absolutely 100% for us.

He loves you. Let that be lesson enough for today.