From a very young age I have always helped people. I grew up in the Christian faith, and was told to love my neighbor as myself, so I did. It was always a part of my life, this loving others. Turning the other cheek was also a part of my Christian tutelage, and while this one was much harder, I lifted my head high and did as I was taught. I wanted to be a good Christian, and being a child, I wanted to be loved for being good, period.
There's nothing wrong with being good, you know. But the problem for me was when I couldn't be good, when I couldn't love the way I was supposed to or I wasn't quite patient enough. These feelings haunted me, left me feeling uneasy and unlovable and well, bad. And bad isn't a great place to dwell for a seven year old. So I tried with all my might to be good.
As I got older, I gave up. As is the case with most adults, I realized that perfection is quite the fleeting reality. I continued to do my duty and love, because I knew there was something to be found in it, some meaning that I couldn't quite capture but knew was important. I learned things from loving others. I learned that people had much more to them than meets the eye, I learned that pain and suffering often leads to beauty, and I learned that hope is the most intangible, tangible item out there.
I also learned that in my human state, it was impossible to love all the time. Sure, it's easy to love for a day or even a week, to sit with hard people and hard things when you know you can leave at the end. But what I was finding was that relationship was hard. That when push came to shove and I had to stay, things quickly got ugly. I found I didn't have as much grace as I thought, or that the nice feeling I got from helping quickly faded when I had to be still, when I had to love in the face of surmounting difficulty.
And so, I began to despair. I began to dislike that I wasn't as gracious and loving and compassionate as I thought I should be. I became bitter towards God and the church, for making me feel like I wasn't enough, for making me question my goodness. And because of this, I feel into a deep depression. The kind of depression that's so far down into the pit that light is impossible to find, the kind of depression that takes a fight to get out of.
I remember God meeting me there. I remember reading the story of Jacob, and how he wrestled with God. I remember thinking that God was saying that I was going to wrestle for a long time, that it was going to be excruciating and hard and dirty, but that I was going to wrestle and overcome.
I didn't know it then, but that was the start of my healing, the start of really knowing God for the first time in the way I was supposed to--not for some performance or cultural expectation or even because the Bible told me so--but because God wanted me to see Him. And he wanted me to know that love surpasses my ability to do good, that it's not about doing good at all.
He wanted me to know grace.
The grace that wasn't earned, contrived, or expected. He didn't care how well I could practice loving others, and he knew that when I did that, I wasn't in fact loving them very much at all. I was doing some good, yes. But mostly, I was looking to fill a part of me that could only be filled by someone else.
I love that when we look at the gospel, Jesus met the lost, the least, and the last first. I love that he met them where they were at--that he saw them and knew them and filled what they needed at that time. If they were hungry, he fed them, if they were lonely, he hugged them. It was all very basic really.
I am learning, to love, basically. I am learning to see the people around me and care for them because I am cared for, deeply. I am learning to celebrate life, to value the stories I get to be a part of, to look people in the eye when they are in pain. I am learning to stay and to hold on and to not give trite answers. I'm learning how to question and sit in doubt and cry out why with the people around me.
I am learning to love, and then love some more.
People idealize volunteer work in so many ways. I know I did. I lived off the high I got from serving in Nicaragua or feeding the homeless for a day. And these are all good things, I'm not saying they aren't. But I have found that it wasn't until I sat with broken things, day in and day out, that I truly understood what love is.
I had to re-learn love, because I was doing it backwards. I had to stop striving, because my striving wasn't genuine, and it was slowly killing me. And thank God I did. I remember looking around me and seeing the people who loved best, the people who I knew cared on a deep, authentic level. I remember that most of them were different than me, different faiths, different faces, different backgrounds. But I remember thinking, they are loving me because they want to, not because they have to.
Was I loving because I wanted to, and not because I had to?
I want to see people, really see them for who they are. I want to listen and hear and know what it is that they are looking for. I want to not be afraid and turn away, to not be sure and try to fix.
There's a quote that says, the deeper the sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
I want to love, and love some more because I am finding that the more I do this, the more joy I can contain. The more I know God, the more I know myself and the meaning that is found even in the sorrow of living.
Loving is scary and hard and unpredictable at times. It hurts, to hurt with others.
But the alternative is death.
Death of the heart.
Death of the soul.
Death of the body.
I think I'd rather reach out for love.
To look for God.
To know love in the most basic, true way. Love that doesn't require anything, love that has no stipulations or requirements or rules.
To stop striving.
To rest.
I will never forget the most powerful example of love and light that God brought into my life. It was right smack dab in the middle of a season of depression that left me gasping for air and looking for answers. And in this season, I worked in a multiple disabilities classroom. I worked with small children who were wheel-chair bound, seizure prone, and very sick. Children who would face a short lifetime of suffering and difficulty and hardship, children whose families did not even have time to ask why or wish for something different.
It was the most difficult job I have ever loved. There were more hard days than good ones, more days of crying in the closet and questioning and unbelief that life could be this hard, this unfair. But in that space, I learned what love was. And it wasn't me who gave it. It was these children, who entrusted me with their lives and believed in me and gave me hope. These little people, who knew what it meant to live, to love.
I named my blog "Overjoyed" for a very specific reason, or actually, for a very specific person. In the MD classroom there was a 8 year old girl by the name of Joy, who definitely lived up to her name. Joy was partially blind, couldn't walk without assistance, and had about four words in her vocabulary--one of which was "cookie." Joy would get so mad she would shake and scream and bite you and fall over on the floor. And then, within five minutes, she would squeal and laugh so hard that she cried and fell over on the floor again. She would give me hugs and slobbery kisses and make me feel unbridled, pure LOVE.
She taught me that love is messy.
That there is no formula, no perfection, that can ever replicate this all consuming, give until you have nothing left, love.
She didn't care what I looked like or what I said or even what I did because she didn't live in my world. I think she lived in God's world, where the only thing that mattered was showing up and being yourself.
We used to say in that classroom, "I'm over-joyed" whenever we needed a quick break. It was our way of letting the other know that we had reached our limit, that we needed some space to recoup and try again. But I also think it was our way of recognizing the weight of what we were seeing, the joy and the pain, right next to each other in that room. Our way of seeing life come from death over and over, our way of feeling the joy and love and sorrow all at once.
So today, I am trying to remind myself that while love has a cost, it's a worthy one. I am fighting to stay and to reach out and to not give into selfishness--not because I have to or I should, but because I know that when I do I find joy.
Real joy, that lasts forever and ever.
Joy that looks darkness in the face and says, not today, friend.
Because love, well. Love goes into the darkness and comes out light.
I don't know anything else that can do that this side of heaven.
Love.
And then love some more.
