Let's Talk About First Loves
Today was one of those rare days when I was up, showered and dressed before 7:30. (Oh, let's be real. It was one of those rare days when I actually showered at all...). Dear Husband even got out of bed and, gasp, changed both girls and had given Big Girl a bottle before I left our bedroom! So it was in this spirit of productivity that I decided I would get the girls ready and head to a Bible study that I sometimes go to on Monday mornings.
A friend of mine gave the devotional today and I was inspired by her to write my own little "a ha" on my walk with the Lord. Warning, it will be a slight departure from the usual wry quips about my children's ability to get me wanting to pull my hair out, but if I type long enough I'm sure Ans will do something that will be note-worthy. Or maybe not, she is kind of glued to Disney Jr. at the moment...
Anyway, when I was a senior in high school I fell in love. It was love at first sight and it was as intense as any first love can be. I had known the guy my entire life but in the minute my eyes were finally opened to him, I went through all the symptoms of a girl in love. Fast, shallow breathing; racing heart; I suddenly had the feeling of being totally present and grounded on earth but with my mind and heart soaring; I experienced the gut-wrenching knowledge that he and I would be together for the rest of my life. In that one instant I knew I had found the person I wanted to spend eternity with and I felt he and I were the only two people on earth.
The only thing that differs from the story of my first love and those of countless teenaged girls everywhere is that my first love was the Savior of the world. That's right. At 17 years old, I fell in love with Jesus Christ. I know, I know. Que the gagging music or the anthem of every Kirk Cameron movie ever made, but bear with me as I delve past my initial infatuation and my story turns to one of sex, drugs and hippie music (rock 'n' roll was never my thing).
'Casue you see, the reality is love at first sight rarely lasts, and first loves are rarer still. There are a million reasons these things don't usually pan out and I'm going to be up front with you and say my experience was no different.
The first few weeks after we started our relationship were pure bliss. I was with the man who made me whole, who made my world a better place and who I knew loved me no matter what. But after that initial honeymoon phase, our relationship started going through growing pains that any relationship does, and it was all my fault. I was too immature to understand that in dying on the cross and becoming resurrected He had already done everything we needed in order to have a wonderful relationship. I didn't know I was the one who needed work. Sure, I knew I needed to try and stop sinning, but really I didn't understand Him. It only made matters worse that I would go days without hearing from Him, I tried doing things I thought would make Him happy, I tried to change for him and I couldn't understand why, after only a short time, I felt He was abandoning me.
We hit our rough patch as soon as I headed off to college. I felt that if He really loved me, He would show Himself to me. Be there for me daily and make me His priority. But after a few months, when I didn't feel that He was giving me what I needed,I started finding it in other places. Turns out a college campus is full of young men who are willing to ply a naive girl with enough booze to lose her inhibitions. I take 100% responsibility for my actions back then, but the fact remains that had I still been living in the convent (AKA my parents house) I probably wouldn't have been offered Natty Light at every social function (read: Any random week night) and might not have developed an affinity for keggers and cheap beer like I did in 2003.
Turns out my relationship with the Lord paralleled a short lived relationship I experienced with a guy at college. In both cases I was over the moon, and in both cases the high of intense attraction was something I couldn't live without once the relationship(s) ended. I searched for that high elsewhere. I started drinking more and eventually got to a point where I was blacked-out almost nightly. I started doing drugs, mostly pot and pills and I wasn't picky about who I went home with. I found out that it was easier to pretend I didn't have inhibitions rather than try to defend them when I was out with people. I was immature and acting out. Like a crazy ex-girlfriend, I was out to show God what He was missing. I thought maybe the more I sinned, the more attention I would get--He'd eventually have to start noticing me, right? Eventually I numbed myself to my sin and forgotten how sweet the love I had shared with God was. By the time I got over being "abandoned" by Christ, I had heaped a load of sin on my tray that I was too ashamed to show Him so I ignored Him completely.
Here is the part where I'd like to say God swept in like an avenging angle and saved me from myself, but that's not the case. I was stuck in this pattern for years. I tried to keep reminding myself that I was still the girl that had fallen in love with God and all of His goodness, but the things I did failed. I got a tattoo of an Ichthus (Jesus fish for y'all not in the know) on the top of my foot, so that if I was out at a bar I would see it and remind myself who I was. Turns out the tattoo was hidden by the strap of my Rainbow flip-flop. I tried switching schools a couple of times thinking getting away from friends I had made would help me, but when I moved I still brought myself with me, and turns out I was the one with the problem even if I didn't fully own that yet. I started college in 2003 and was on track to graduate summer 2007 when, in the spring of that year, I went to my professor and said I was dropping out. He encouraged me to just take a break and "Go west, Young Man," so I went. I went about as West as you can get--Illiamnia, Alaska.
In Alaska it was really hard to get booze and drugs. I honestly went there to detox and gather my thoughts. Turns out the Man I had fallen in love with years before wanted to meet me there and He showed up in the form of a tall, grouchy, red-headed Italian who himself was not a Christian but who had the ability to recognize the brokenness in me and respond to it.
Meeting my husband in Alaska was a God-send. Our relationship has never been easy nor was it started with God at the center but I can see how even then God was using both the best and the worst of each of our natures to bring out the best in one another.
When I moved out here to be with my then boyfriend, I was on a slow, upward trajectory of personal growth. Being away from bad influences I wasn't strong enough to ignore, being away from the unconditional (sometimes enabling) support of my family, living with a domineering and temperamental man and learning to hold my tongue in order to keep the peace, I see looking back now, were all pieces of God's plan for my life falling into place.
It wasn't until Easter 2010 that I could see my First love working in the heart and life of my second. My then fiance said he would start attending an Alpha course with me (a Christianity/Jesus 101 Bible study). By this time I had finally turned my head back to the Lord, but my face was still down cast. And although I had accepted He had taken my sins off the tray I had put before Him, I was still desperately clinging to the tray, unable to give Him everything. There was a dirtiness and an ugliness to my life that I could not give back to the Man whom I had fallen in love with so long ago.
My now husband accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior one month before our wedding. I was never happier to be second place than when my husband told me Jesus was first in his heart. While I was ecstatic that my husband would be in Heaven after his life here on earth ended, I still wasn't convinced I'd be there with him. If I was, I was positive God was going to put me on display as a "what not to do" in front of the "good" Christians on my day of judgement. Like some tawdry past relationship that when your ex sees you he goes, "Shew! Dodged a bullet there!"
Again, I'd like to say that after my husband accepted Jesus that everything went to the roses and the sun shone brighter, but unfortunately I am just a student of Christ's and I am a SLOW learner. It has taken three years, one move, several friends and a million prayers as a mother to two daughters for me to loosen my grip on the tray that carried my past sins and try giving to God, and my load is lighter.
Falling in love with Jesus the second time is not as earth-shattering as the first. It has not been an instantaneous thing like when I first fell in love with Him, but it is a journey that is allowing me to know Him and myself more intimately. Like any relationship where you've been together a long time, I know Him more and the more I know, the more appreciate and the deeper in love I fall. I'm more mature now than when I fell head over heels the first time and because of that, I can see my relationship with God growing into something more than just a passionate few months long affair.
Like any relationship, the one we have with our Creator is not effortless. The God of the universe was so upset at the way mankind fouled things up and so wanted a relationship with us that he sent himself, as His Son, in a human body, to die on a cross and raise up from the grave. Kind of makes whatever effort we put into it seem like a cakewalk. And it does take effort! I complain if my husband doesn't want to talk when He gets home from work and OK, he has a tough job but I need that conversation to feel connected to him. Why should we give less to God? Believe me, it's our job to go to Him. I can guarantee He's had the tougher day. If we love Him we have to show it through our actions. I can say I love Him all day long but unless I know Him intimately and let Him search my heart and transform me into His likeness, it is meaningless.
My perspective on the relationship I have with Him has changed from those first weeks when I first told Him, "I love You." Instead of focusing when I can hear from God next, I try to remember it is my job to seek Him. Instead of trying to do things to impress Him or make Him happy, I now realize that there is no goodness in me without Him and I need to be living my life in a way that impresses His love onto other people. Instead of thinking I am going to change to make God happy, I know it's Him changing me that will result in true happiness.
Our relationship is complicated and will never be easy but no matter how hard it gets, or how alone I feel sometimes, I just have to keep reminding myself to seek Him out. Looking back, it is obvious that God NEVER abandoned me, even at my lowest and weakest moments. There are a million and one times where I should have died/been arrested (again)/hurt someone else and for whatever reason, nothing too terrible ever happened to me. I mean, there are probably YouTube videos out there but I'm not going to go seek them out.
Bottom line, since before he put me in my momma's womb he knew me perfectly, better than I know myself. He knew I was going to fall in love with Him and make all of these grandiose plans and promises I'd wind up breaking. He knew I was going to get to a point in my life where I stopped loving Him and stopped loving myself. And even though I didn't feel it and I questioned it and for a while stopped believing it, Christ never stopped loving me.
That's what makes my First Love story so special. Unlike so many stories you hear about love lost, I am proud to say that although we've had our ups and downs and I am hard to be in a relationship with, my First Love has stuck with me. Although I am difficult to live with and have a million flaws, my First Love will never leave me.
A friend of mine gave the devotional today and I was inspired by her to write my own little "a ha" on my walk with the Lord. Warning, it will be a slight departure from the usual wry quips about my children's ability to get me wanting to pull my hair out, but if I type long enough I'm sure Ans will do something that will be note-worthy. Or maybe not, she is kind of glued to Disney Jr. at the moment...
Anyway, when I was a senior in high school I fell in love. It was love at first sight and it was as intense as any first love can be. I had known the guy my entire life but in the minute my eyes were finally opened to him, I went through all the symptoms of a girl in love. Fast, shallow breathing; racing heart; I suddenly had the feeling of being totally present and grounded on earth but with my mind and heart soaring; I experienced the gut-wrenching knowledge that he and I would be together for the rest of my life. In that one instant I knew I had found the person I wanted to spend eternity with and I felt he and I were the only two people on earth.
The only thing that differs from the story of my first love and those of countless teenaged girls everywhere is that my first love was the Savior of the world. That's right. At 17 years old, I fell in love with Jesus Christ. I know, I know. Que the gagging music or the anthem of every Kirk Cameron movie ever made, but bear with me as I delve past my initial infatuation and my story turns to one of sex, drugs and hippie music (rock 'n' roll was never my thing).
'Casue you see, the reality is love at first sight rarely lasts, and first loves are rarer still. There are a million reasons these things don't usually pan out and I'm going to be up front with you and say my experience was no different.
The first few weeks after we started our relationship were pure bliss. I was with the man who made me whole, who made my world a better place and who I knew loved me no matter what. But after that initial honeymoon phase, our relationship started going through growing pains that any relationship does, and it was all my fault. I was too immature to understand that in dying on the cross and becoming resurrected He had already done everything we needed in order to have a wonderful relationship. I didn't know I was the one who needed work. Sure, I knew I needed to try and stop sinning, but really I didn't understand Him. It only made matters worse that I would go days without hearing from Him, I tried doing things I thought would make Him happy, I tried to change for him and I couldn't understand why, after only a short time, I felt He was abandoning me.
We hit our rough patch as soon as I headed off to college. I felt that if He really loved me, He would show Himself to me. Be there for me daily and make me His priority. But after a few months, when I didn't feel that He was giving me what I needed,I started finding it in other places. Turns out a college campus is full of young men who are willing to ply a naive girl with enough booze to lose her inhibitions. I take 100% responsibility for my actions back then, but the fact remains that had I still been living in the convent (AKA my parents house) I probably wouldn't have been offered Natty Light at every social function (read: Any random week night) and might not have developed an affinity for keggers and cheap beer like I did in 2003.
Turns out my relationship with the Lord paralleled a short lived relationship I experienced with a guy at college. In both cases I was over the moon, and in both cases the high of intense attraction was something I couldn't live without once the relationship(s) ended. I searched for that high elsewhere. I started drinking more and eventually got to a point where I was blacked-out almost nightly. I started doing drugs, mostly pot and pills and I wasn't picky about who I went home with. I found out that it was easier to pretend I didn't have inhibitions rather than try to defend them when I was out with people. I was immature and acting out. Like a crazy ex-girlfriend, I was out to show God what He was missing. I thought maybe the more I sinned, the more attention I would get--He'd eventually have to start noticing me, right? Eventually I numbed myself to my sin and forgotten how sweet the love I had shared with God was. By the time I got over being "abandoned" by Christ, I had heaped a load of sin on my tray that I was too ashamed to show Him so I ignored Him completely.
Here is the part where I'd like to say God swept in like an avenging angle and saved me from myself, but that's not the case. I was stuck in this pattern for years. I tried to keep reminding myself that I was still the girl that had fallen in love with God and all of His goodness, but the things I did failed. I got a tattoo of an Ichthus (Jesus fish for y'all not in the know) on the top of my foot, so that if I was out at a bar I would see it and remind myself who I was. Turns out the tattoo was hidden by the strap of my Rainbow flip-flop. I tried switching schools a couple of times thinking getting away from friends I had made would help me, but when I moved I still brought myself with me, and turns out I was the one with the problem even if I didn't fully own that yet. I started college in 2003 and was on track to graduate summer 2007 when, in the spring of that year, I went to my professor and said I was dropping out. He encouraged me to just take a break and "Go west, Young Man," so I went. I went about as West as you can get--Illiamnia, Alaska.
In Alaska it was really hard to get booze and drugs. I honestly went there to detox and gather my thoughts. Turns out the Man I had fallen in love with years before wanted to meet me there and He showed up in the form of a tall, grouchy, red-headed Italian who himself was not a Christian but who had the ability to recognize the brokenness in me and respond to it.
Meeting my husband in Alaska was a God-send. Our relationship has never been easy nor was it started with God at the center but I can see how even then God was using both the best and the worst of each of our natures to bring out the best in one another.
When I moved out here to be with my then boyfriend, I was on a slow, upward trajectory of personal growth. Being away from bad influences I wasn't strong enough to ignore, being away from the unconditional (sometimes enabling) support of my family, living with a domineering and temperamental man and learning to hold my tongue in order to keep the peace, I see looking back now, were all pieces of God's plan for my life falling into place.
It wasn't until Easter 2010 that I could see my First love working in the heart and life of my second. My then fiance said he would start attending an Alpha course with me (a Christianity/Jesus 101 Bible study). By this time I had finally turned my head back to the Lord, but my face was still down cast. And although I had accepted He had taken my sins off the tray I had put before Him, I was still desperately clinging to the tray, unable to give Him everything. There was a dirtiness and an ugliness to my life that I could not give back to the Man whom I had fallen in love with so long ago.
My now husband accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior one month before our wedding. I was never happier to be second place than when my husband told me Jesus was first in his heart. While I was ecstatic that my husband would be in Heaven after his life here on earth ended, I still wasn't convinced I'd be there with him. If I was, I was positive God was going to put me on display as a "what not to do" in front of the "good" Christians on my day of judgement. Like some tawdry past relationship that when your ex sees you he goes, "Shew! Dodged a bullet there!"
Again, I'd like to say that after my husband accepted Jesus that everything went to the roses and the sun shone brighter, but unfortunately I am just a student of Christ's and I am a SLOW learner. It has taken three years, one move, several friends and a million prayers as a mother to two daughters for me to loosen my grip on the tray that carried my past sins and try giving to God, and my load is lighter.
Falling in love with Jesus the second time is not as earth-shattering as the first. It has not been an instantaneous thing like when I first fell in love with Him, but it is a journey that is allowing me to know Him and myself more intimately. Like any relationship where you've been together a long time, I know Him more and the more I know, the more appreciate and the deeper in love I fall. I'm more mature now than when I fell head over heels the first time and because of that, I can see my relationship with God growing into something more than just a passionate few months long affair.
Like any relationship, the one we have with our Creator is not effortless. The God of the universe was so upset at the way mankind fouled things up and so wanted a relationship with us that he sent himself, as His Son, in a human body, to die on a cross and raise up from the grave. Kind of makes whatever effort we put into it seem like a cakewalk. And it does take effort! I complain if my husband doesn't want to talk when He gets home from work and OK, he has a tough job but I need that conversation to feel connected to him. Why should we give less to God? Believe me, it's our job to go to Him. I can guarantee He's had the tougher day. If we love Him we have to show it through our actions. I can say I love Him all day long but unless I know Him intimately and let Him search my heart and transform me into His likeness, it is meaningless.
My perspective on the relationship I have with Him has changed from those first weeks when I first told Him, "I love You." Instead of focusing when I can hear from God next, I try to remember it is my job to seek Him. Instead of trying to do things to impress Him or make Him happy, I now realize that there is no goodness in me without Him and I need to be living my life in a way that impresses His love onto other people. Instead of thinking I am going to change to make God happy, I know it's Him changing me that will result in true happiness.
Our relationship is complicated and will never be easy but no matter how hard it gets, or how alone I feel sometimes, I just have to keep reminding myself to seek Him out. Looking back, it is obvious that God NEVER abandoned me, even at my lowest and weakest moments. There are a million and one times where I should have died/been arrested (again)/hurt someone else and for whatever reason, nothing too terrible ever happened to me. I mean, there are probably YouTube videos out there but I'm not going to go seek them out.
Bottom line, since before he put me in my momma's womb he knew me perfectly, better than I know myself. He knew I was going to fall in love with Him and make all of these grandiose plans and promises I'd wind up breaking. He knew I was going to get to a point in my life where I stopped loving Him and stopped loving myself. And even though I didn't feel it and I questioned it and for a while stopped believing it, Christ never stopped loving me.
That's what makes my First Love story so special. Unlike so many stories you hear about love lost, I am proud to say that although we've had our ups and downs and I am hard to be in a relationship with, my First Love has stuck with me. Although I am difficult to live with and have a million flaws, my First Love will never leave me.
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