He Chose Me. Not the Other way Around.

There’s a love I’ve fallen in love with
A love that I can come back to
Whether I’ve loved it or not.
Whether I’ve thought about it that day or not.
This love is forgiving.
Ever-open.
I could run to it after years of running away and it’d smile every time.
I am thankful for that love.
Unlike it,
Sometimes I forget that I love it.
I forget what it feels like to love it back.
I get stubborn.
Easily angered.
I pull the life-didn’t-go-my-way card.
And still, it loves me.
I could say that it loves me back.
But that wouldn’t be accurate.
Because I don’t always love it.
Therefore it can’t exactly “love me back” when I don’t love it first.
Because it first loved me.
It chose me. Not the other way around.
I don’t fully understand this love.
I’m just thankful for it.
I don’t fully grasp its purpose in loving me.
It just loves.
I think we as humans are so quick to resist love. Especially True Love.
We see it’s purity and lack of condition.
And in our pride we turn away
Because we know we will never be capable of loving it back as it loves us.
Or we don’t want our wounds to heal. Which doesn’t make sense at all cause we go to doctors on nearly every occasion begging them to heal our physical wounds, while at the same time we leave our emotional wounds gaping and unnursed.
We turn to other unwhole people to see if they can heal them. Boyfriends. Girlfriends. Parents. Siblings. Friends.
Trying to fill the damage caused by the past, hiding from ourselves the fact that
If we just went to the one true love,
Our wounds would heal forever.
Our trial would be joy
Our pain just a fraction of the reward we have to come.
Have you noticed that when we’re in love,
We can go through nearly anything if it means we preserve or save or remain with the thing or person we love?
I at one time thought I’d be able to endure pain like that of Paul when he was persecuted and thrown in jail,
But as I come ever closer to being at odds with the government, my knees get feeble and my faith gets weak.
Because my love is small. My love for True Love is quite too small.
You see. The confusing part is
You can’t make yourself love true love.
It doesn’t work that way. It chose you. Not the other way around.
It wanted to know you first. Not the other way around.
You have to ask it to help you love it. You see why we resist it: sometimes we are too proud to ask for help.
But the further you run the more you realize you’re going the wrong direction I guess. And it draws you to it.
So people ask: why is there pain in the world? Why is the world fallen?
Well solution number one: bad choices. Sin. Desire for more than we can handle. For more than we ought. Desire for things that taste good while denying what we know to be the only true and good thing. That’s reason number one.

But reason number two:
Because as for myself, if I didn’t have pain, I’d forget why I needed Him. I’d fake myself into thinking that I was whole. We become pretty good at it, don’t we?
You see. I think we’ve gotten so good at lying to ourselves and letting others lie to us. I don’t understand this.
We go on day by day, trying to do life on our own, and we fake ourselves into thinking that we’ve got it all under control.
Things go well.
And we begin to forget that we’re not the ones in control. Yes we have the power to make minute choices.
But in the grand scheme of things
Pain is the reality check.
Pain gets us back on track.
Pain
Reminds me that I’m not the one in control.
And that I can’t do it on my own.
The pattern of calm, storm, longer calm, storm is to get our attention.
See I think this is a problem in society: that we all say we’re “good”.
“How are you?” “Oh I’m good thanks… doing well”
Maybe you are good. maybe you are doing well.
But what if we’re not? Well. We lie.
Because no one wants to hear that you’re not good. and you want them to hear what they want to hear.
I’m not saying to go around showing off your gashes to the masses. Not everyone is going to have the band-aid of grace. But just that we shouldn’t be afraid or slow to tell the truth.
Have you ever had the moment where someone asks you how you are doing, and when you truly think about it, you don’t have an answer.
I don’t know how I am doing.
Well for myself. It mainly happens when I’m too busy. I’ve lied to myself for so long or forced myself to not think about it for so long that I am rotting away spiritually. And I don’t even realize it.
I hate lying to myself. Especially when I don’t even notice I’m doing it.
Get a load of this: This love. It never lies.
It doesn’t cheat on you. Or ‘forget’ to tell you something. It’s true. One hundred percent money-back guarantee.
(If you notice, we can’t even love ourselves correctly- seeing as we lie to ourselves all the time about how we really are feeling.)
But this love never lies. And it considers others above itself.
I was reading a book where a man pointed out that when he was in love, he didn’t think about his own desires or needs for days. All he could think about was the one he loved.
Well True Love is like that all the time. It thinks about me all the time. It thinks about you all the time. Therefore I should be quick to fall back in love with it.
This man also said that he felt that selfless love was the one thing God didn’t curse. The fact that he could consider another person above himself fully was a gift.
I want to fall in that type of love.
That’s the type of love God deserves. I’m just so bad at giving it to Him.
Yet I’ll continue to ask that He puts that desire in my heart- the desire to love Him.
Because, for some unexplainable reason, He chose me. Not the other way around.
And He chose humanity.
I don’t understand it yet and I’m not sure I ever will.
But I guess that’s what faith is for. I am sure that no matter what I do, True Love will keep on loving me and I will continue loving it. It’ll keep leaving me messages even when I don’t answer on purpose. I’ll run home to it and it will welcome me home. And when I am unfaithful and return home it will still be there. That’s something we barely ever find in another person. When you do though, keep it. And then thank the One who first showed us how to love unconditionally. That’s a love I can fall in love with. And stay happily married with forever. Cause divorce is not an option. He chose me. Not the other way around.