....love is made complete.

"You can't give what you don't have"


Those words echoed in my head as I walked the shoreline. I could feel the water between my toes, coming in and leaving again, in the steady rhythm of the tide. At the same time I could feel the water streaming down my face as I surveyed an empty beach.


What was it I wanted to give? God's Love. What was the one thing I wanted more than anything in the world, but didnt think I had? God's love.


It has always felt like the greatest irony in the world to teach and preach of the Father's compassionate love while my own soul has remained numb to it's reality. But thats what I did. Out of an inability to truly mourn my past hurts, to truly come to God as the broken person I am, I created what Brennan Manning calls in his book "Abba's Child" the impostor. The impostor is a fake self, born of fear and grown by the constant harsh realities of the human condition.


I've told my self my whole life, that I can only be accepted when everything is going well. When I perform well, I please God. When I dont, he is disappointed. I told myself that God loves me in spite of my sin, when the truth is that he loves me with it, because that is full acceptance.


I think what breaks the heart of God more than anything is our fear and self rejection. We fear ourselves and everything and everyone around us, and we project our hatred of ourselves and our fearing of screwing up onto God.


"When I remove my pride....love is made complete"


Thomas Merton says "The reason we never enter into the deepest reality of our relationship with God, is that we so seldom acknowledge our utter nothingness before him."


In 2 Corinthians 12:9 the apostle Paul writes "But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. ' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me."


I guess you could say I am learning to come to terms with my weakness. I believe God loves me in a way I havent believed in a while. 


And I believe this is everything. I have made it my life to do anything humanly possible to give the love of the Father to those around me. I have toiled, studied, worked, done everything in my power to show his love to others.


But. "You can't give what you dont have." So God is showing me now that I do have his love. That I have something to give. That, as Macaulay Culkin put it in Home Alone "I'm not afraid anymore!"


I'm through with self-rejection, and through with fear. Fully recognizing that I am Gods son, and he is my father. Fully recognizing that while this will continue to be a process, God has in fact met me on that beach in Atlantic City. He is transforming me and conforming me to the likeness of his son.


Only when I feel safe with God do I feel safe with myself. And I'm learning to feel safe with God.