Precious in Our Sight

On Monday morning, I started my day the way I usually do, with prayers for my children. 

Ethan and His Fiancée, Sumer

Allyson - Dec 2021

In the last minutes between my daily mini trampoline workout and logging on to my laptop, I continued the prayer I'd been saying aloud for Allyson. "Help me love her like You do," I concluded. "I know you love her even more than I do. She is precious in your sight."

After a moment, I added, "She's precious in my sight too." 

The answer that flitted through my mind surprised and delighted me. "She's precious in our sight." 

Within moments, tears flowed down my cheeks, and I couldn't tell if they were happy or sad tears. I remembered how I'd felt when Bill and I sat together, admiring baby Allyson, basking in a shared love that was bigger than the sum of the love that we felt for her individually. Although it had been months or even years since I'd felt the acute pain of loss, I mourned my divorce one more time. "I'm so tired of being a single mom," I said aloud, half talking to myself and half continuing my prayer. 

Oh, I knew that Bill loved Allyson as much as ever, and so did I, but there is a difference between loving her individually and loving her together. How I missed our shared affection, pride, and delight. In that moment, I realized that I had been perceiving God's love for Allyson in the same way: as related to my love, yet separate. 

I closed my eyes and relished the wonderful truth that I am not really a single mom. I'm not shouldering the weight of responsibility and worry and decisions all alone because God is always with me, and His Spirit comforts me, strengthens me, and leads me with a discernment beyond my understanding. I wrapped my arms around myself and let the tears fall even as my lips curved into a smile. "We are loving her together," I whispered. "Thank you, Father." 

When I started work, my thoughts were soon pulled in other directions, but I didn't lose the feeling of connection with my Beloved. As I pondered the experience over lunch, I thought back to the sermon on love from the day before. My heart beat faster as I perceived the connections and applied the message to my struggles as a parent.

Pastor Trey had shared several points that surprised me and challenged my beliefs about love:

• Love is not just words. 

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal," he quoted, punctuating his words by striking a cymbal (1 Corinthians 13:1). 

• Love is not knowledge. 

He went on to quote verse 2, "If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:2).

In order to understand what Paul is saying about love, he explained, we need to look at the previous chapter. He then read the verses in chapter 12 about the church being members of one body, each with different gifts, and about all the members suffering when one suffers, and rejoicing together when one is honored. He reminded us that we all need each other. "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you!'" he read.... "Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers?... Now eagerly desire the greater gifts" (1 Corinthians 12:21, 29).

All of us have different gifts, he explained, but those gifts come from the same Spirit within us. We are different, and we are all needed in order for the body to function properly. It's good for us to desire the gifts of the Spirit, he said, but there's something even better to long for. He read the last part of 12:29 and then went back to 13:1: "And yet I will show you the most excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal..." (emphasis added). 

With Pastor Trey's help, I could clearly see how verses 1-3 of chapter 13 mirror the gifts listed at the end of chapter 12. Although all the gifts are to be desired, what good are they if they are practiced outside of the context of love?

Next, he continued the list of things that love is not: 

• Love is not actions, nor is love a choice.

I raised my eyebrows as I thought back to the "Choose Love" signs that used to hang on my classroom wall when I was a teacher. I thought about how I had chosen loving actions when I wanted to throttle some of my students. 

Pastor Trey confessed that he had counseled many people over the years to choose love. "When someone told me he didn't think he loved his wife any more, I'd tell him, love is a choice. You have to choose to honor your commitment." 

"But now I realize that love is not a choice," he said. He talked about all the reasons why we can't trust ourselves to choose who we will love. When we choose, we often love the people who are most like us, the ones who look like us or act like us or have the same orientation as us. If we are going to love like Jesus, we can't pick and choose who we will love.

But how can we love like Him? I wondered. I thought back to all my prayers over the last few years for my children, how I've asked Jesus so many times to help me love them with His perfect love--but I can't. No matter how hard I try, my love is... not enough.

Pastor Trey must have anticipated my question, because he went on to explain something so profound that I still haven't stopped thinking about it. "You can't chase after loving actions," he said. "The answer isn't your actions, it's... trusting Jesus." 

I furrowed my brow, searching for the connection. 

He described, at last, what love is:

• Love is an attitude of the soul.

He explained that when we seek Jesus instead of pursuing love, we get close to Him and become more like Him. As His Spirit fills us up, the love of God naturally flows out of us, and we love whoever He loves--not just the people like us. Love becomes who we are, and what we do. 

This idea of pursuing Jesus instead of striving to make myself love better was so freeing. For the last six months or so, I've been deliberately choosing to demonstrate my love for my children through my actions. I don't think that's a bad thing, and I want to continue showing my love. But I don't need to put so much pressure on myself to do it right. If I love Jesus with all my heart and nurture that relationship, I will have so much more love to give. 

A verse in one of my devotionals on Monday morning tied everything together for me: "My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth" (1 John 3:19).

Loving does involve actions; it isn't just words. But those loving actions have to be done in truth, the truth of who Jesus is and how He loves us. 

An hour after I read that verse and thought about how connecting with Jesus can help me love others, that flash of understanding came to me about loving Allyson together with God. I look forward to loving my children together with my Beloved for the rest of my life. They are precious in our sight!