Lovingkind Counsel

This kind of feels like a loaded question but I’m excited to answer it. By most accounts, to know fractions of what I’ve lived through, you might agree that I’ve had a pretty traumatic life. I feel blessed to say that I’ve always made it out on the other side. I just remember “I know the plans I have for you. I know the thoughts I think towards you”. I have and do spend a good amount of time thinking about the past. I think many of us do and for me it depends on the day. There are days when I’m mostly thinking about the future, but there are days when I can’t help but think about the past. To be clear, the past can be a few hours ago and 20yrs ago. I think the “Why?” is what’s most important.

There have been points in my life where I visited the past like I was visiting a prisoner. My trauma was found guilty and locked up in my mind. I was stuck in this cycle of pain and suffering and the only way I could feel like I had any control of what happened was to keep it in lockdown.

There were points where I had to revisit the prison because I needed to know why. Why these things happened to me. Why I had to go through so much. I launched my own investigation replaying every detail and gathering any new information. Like double jeopardy didn’t exist.

This might’ve gone on for the rest of my life except I came to a moment when I realized that the same people that I had under lock and key in my head -looked quite free and HAPPY outside of it. Suddenly the math wasn’t mathing for me anymore. I went through a period of anger because they was living life like nothing ever happened. I was angry that they was allowed to be happy? Turns out I too was allowed to be happy and free, but it required me to give up my control, hand over the keys to the prison cell and free them. I didn’t realize that I was the one who was trapped inside revisiting the trauma. I was torturing myself. I can’t take the credit for this change of mind. It took a great big loving God who didn’t find it beneath him to put off his majesty for a little while to come see about little me.

The craziest thing is the closer I’ve gotten to God the more my perspective of my past has changed. I went from being a victim of my past, to a survivor of it, to a victor from it, to a spokesperson for it. The higher you climb on a tree, the more different the things on the ground look. With every new height, I gained a new perspective on my past, but I also gained a new perspective on my future because things not only look different on the ground, they look different above me too.

Today’s AJ would sound crazy to the AJ of 15 years ago, but I’m so grateful for my past. I want to go back to the people who hurt me and say thank you -truly thank you. If I had never been hurt, I could not help someone else who had been hurt. God is always right. He doesn’t put more on us then we can bear so if I went through this, and I made it to the other side, then I bared it. It may have hurt… It may have been hard… It may have been bloody and ugly, but I bared it! Sacrifice isn’t pretty. The weapon may have formed but if I’m still here then it didn’t prosper. What if this is the plan he has for you? What if the love he has for his children or the world requires that this is the plan for you? [Don’t worry I had to (forgive) release God from my prison too.] It’s not that crazy an idea. We have done an incredible job of making God bite-sized so that we can remain in control in our minds. He love the world so much that he sacrificed his only son to save it. God’s love does not change and neither does his plans for your future. He said it was for good things. You just have to hold on through the ugly parts and you’ll get high enough to see how it all worked together for your good -for your future.

I love you but not more than God

I asked God to help me love better and then He showed me something and I’m going to share it with you. I GUARANTEE that this will bless you too!

Let’s talk real… I was thinking about my husband and how he has frustrated me so many times over the years. I’ll give a simple example. Stay with me… I promise I’m going somewhere good. One day we were riding together and somehow in conversation a landmark came up. I mentioned that the last time I rode by this location there was construction and how all the buildings on that block had been torn down. My husband responded with certainty that I was incorrect and that there was something else in the spot. Contrary to the old me, I did not go back and forth with him. I just said alright and let it go. Well it happened that we ended up riding past the location that we were talking about earlier and I saw him realize that he was wrong but I didn’t even acknowledge it. When we got home he said to me, I’m sorry sometimes I don’t remember things right. I asked him how long this had been going on and prayed for him. When I spoke to God later that night I was frustrated and brought up how I was always the kind one, and the peaceful one and still being encouraging to him even when he isn’t towards me. I cried because I felt like it wasn’t fair. Then I repented, cried some more and went to bed.

I woke up the next morning and I was talking to God and asking why my husband can’t love me right (I felt convicted for that -I was being a brat) I repented and confessed that I can have a self-centered way of seeing the world and how things affect me but that it wasn’t lost on me how much I could be affecting others. Then I was reminded that in that moment, although I may have been justified, there have been times when I wasn’t. We all know the scripture “Love is patient, kind…” (1Corinthians 13:4-7) but, I find that the reasons why we don’t or can’t love right are “we things” or “me things”. These reasons have nothing to do with the recipient. WE just cannot love right in ourselves! We have made love about feelings when God made it truth. Love is truth! Love is foundational.

Thinking about my example, I have wasted so much time and energy trying to figure out why people can’t understand how I understand and why they don’t see things the way I see them. How come nobody else can seem to treat me the way I treat them or show the same simple courtesy? Some times in our frustration we call this common sense, but what if there is no such thing as common sense? What if it’s just your God-given sense, that’s different for everyone else and what if it’s based on our gifts, callings, assignments and EXPERIENCES? I think about all the time I’ve wasted trying to teach others how to do what I seem to do very easily or even naturally, but how it never seems to work exactly right. How I’ve allowed my heart to be broken by my misplaced expectations of others to be like me and to treat me the way I treat them. But what if they’re not supposed to be able to do what you do or be the way that you are? I discarded the prescribed (ordained) experiences that gave me my testimony and made my election sure. In the words of Taylor Swift… “It’s me guys, I’m the problem it’s me”! It’s me who has underestimated or not truly understood who God made ME. I have devalued how much of THAT influences and affects how I view the world, situations and people. It directly affects how I perceive everything. 

This misunderstanding has caused me to “feel some type of way” about people and that type of way is not love, but, if I cannot love them then what will cover their (multitude of) sin? If you’re like me and have held people accountable (guilty) for not being like you. I pray this revelation freed you because it’s time to free (forgive) them too. I freed my husband and it has helped me to heal and to love him better. After all that is how the world will know us (by the love we have for one another).

*Devotion – Psalm 139:14 / Ephesians 2:10 / 1Peter 3:8

I love you, but not more than God.