what love wants
“It’s like, God’s doing addition and we’re doing trigonometry.”
I asked God what She wanted from me. They told me, “love.” And I dismissed Him because that answer didn’t seem like an answer at all. Love was too easy, too simple.
So I asked again. And It’s response was the same.
“Love.”
And part of me wants to write this off as some “new-age” or “woo woo” kind of faith. The kind of faith built on wet sand. The kind of faith that isn’t faith at all.
My church taught me-whether intentionally or unintentionally- that God was not for me, but me for God. That I was a tool for God to use. And as such, I needed to play my part- even at the expense of self. I was given a box. And I was told to get in at any cost. Only I was too big- too misshapen. In desperation, I ripped off pieces of self to fit.
With bloody hands and broken eyes, I laid at the altar weeping, “my body broken for you.”
I can feel Jesus raising me up, wrapping me in a warm embrace. This is not what he meant. He looks at me with eyes full of warmth, and understanding. Correcting me, he says, “my body broken for you.” He reminds me of the cross. Of the lost sheep. Of the exiled lepers. Story after story, Jesus tells me of the waters he’s walked, and the people he’s fed, and the lives he’s healed all to meet people where they are.
Jesus tells me to love God is to let God love me. And when I roll my eyes, asking “and what else? What do you need me to do?” He smiles at my faithlessness. Because I had it wrong. There are no conditions to be met- no roles to be filled. There is nothing asked of me. I am not parts- not made of uses. I am being. I am alive. I am experience. I am love.
And Love is the hard thing. Because everything tells us we are not worthy of it. That maybe we can find some semblance of it in romance, or work, or passion. But then we get dumped, or fired, or lost. And love leaves. Only that wasn’t love, because love is without expectation or want. Love asks nothing. It only gives. She only restores. He only protects. They only hope.
May you hold onto this, even when it hurts. Especially then.
Ma salam
Aziza