A Let-Me-Lavish-You Kind of Love

I've been thinking a lot lately about my parents, what complex people they are. How they are, in fact, people. Which means they have made errors and faced hardships just like I am encountering now in my twenties--each new year seems to bring with it a new discovery about life and its many opportunities to feel ill at ease. (As well as to feel good; I'm not trying to be a dour pessimist. But as Ann Brashares notes in My Name is Memory: like Southerners remembering the fallout of the Civil War, "You forget your victories, but you remember the losses.” I can't deny there is some weighty truth there.)

Anyway, I've been considering the painful fallout each of my parents has faced throughout their lives. I am immeasurably impressed and relieved at how they each have insulated their reasons for bitterness and absolute distrust of God's goodness or the goodness of those they've mostly dearly loved (that is, each other), from me, their daughter. they have each loved me in a let-me-lavish-you kind of way. The image to come immediately to mind is that of how my friend from undergrad, Steph Chan, describes God's love for us: "Imagine a dumptruck. Imagine you standing behind it. Imagine God releasing a dumptruck of love onto you, covering you completely in His love." Like that.

Of course, being the younger child, I have the benefit of greater naiveté. Things weren't as peachy as they appeared from a teenager's point of view, whose losses were greater than mine, as a 7-year-old. One of the most unpalatable facts of life is how horrible outcomes are never split evenly between parties. I've long felt that between my brother and me, I've gotten the easier half of everything. I think he would agree, and he is so right to.

My parents, though: after the divorce, my dad raised me full time. He doted upon me to a fault. He made me a literary, athletic, extroverted, school-oriented, curious-about-God girl. Yes, I did just write that: "he made me." I do credit him with much of how I developed into the "mix of colors" I am today (thank you, C.M., for that compliment...and thank you, C.C., C.Y., N.M., D.L., and C.M., for always defending his character). After his death, I've become close with my mom again. It's a pretty amazing story of redemption going on before our very eyes. How do we "redeem the time" lost in childhood (see Ephesians 5:15-17)? We've spent a lot of time together lately and it's pretty awesome what God can do to mend families, one day at a time. It's discovery for me to find out who my mother is, in terms of her personality and rooting out the source(s) of her perseverance. Our family's story is not a fairy tale, I assure you. We don't match with the more functional parts of our extended family. But it does feel right and good, the progress our little unit is making towards God's vision for how He created us to be.

What strikes me when I think about both my parents is that they have both succeeded in making me, their child, feel so loved. Maya Angelou's quote captures it so perfectly: "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

Now, I am a person who remembers the exact words that come out of the mouths of people most dear to me. I write them down, often, because I don't want to forget them. But sometimes, those words (if they're claims of love) don't prove true in the long run of how they do or don't love you. And people's actions? The difficulty of forgiveness proves that people's actions toward us (for us or against us) are mammothly important in how we relate to them. I've always thought, before today, that Angelou's quote was a little simplistic for this reason. But I cannot deny that how a person makes you feel is a unique indicator of their quality of love for you. I can compare significant others (with each other) and family members (with each other) along these axes, and I find startling differences. I feel much more loved by some than others, even though the fact of their spoken love is, on the surface, equal or the same.

The quality of love... Lord, let me be wise in response to the high-quality love I get to receive in this life. Thank you for directing that quality of human love that way, towards me. May I make your creations feel especially loved too-- remove the me from interfering and let it be all You streaming through to them.