love Archives - Kristen Anne Glover

Cherished

Cherished

All I ever wanted for Valentine’s Day was the one thing he could never give me. I wanted to feel completely loved and cherished, but my husband always fell short in that department. He wasn’t the kind of guy who bought flowers or gushed sentiment.

On the good days, I thought he enjoyed my company. I could be cute, sometimes, and funny. I made good deserts and edited his papers.

But other days, I wondered if he even liked me. I could be bristly, irritable, and unlovely. The deeper into love I got, the more broken I found myself to be. I couldn’t hold on to affection or warmth or tenderness—it all seemed to run out through my cracks.

Somewhere along the road, I’d been dropped a few too many times. I had learned what no one ever intended to teach me: I was not worth holding on to. I was replaceable. Forgettable. Only worthwhile as long as I was perfect and pretty, compliant and amusing, holy and willing.

When I couldn’t be all of that, well, people let go.

And I shattered.

Because I knew I was rarely perfect and hardly ever holy. Truth be told, I wasn’t even funny. I only pretended to be so I could keep people far enough away to where they couldn’t hurt me.

If I had to be all those things, who could ever love me? I learned to keep part of myself back—the part that really mattered—so when someone let go, not all of me fell.

Only, I didn’t really know it until a boy tried to love me and couldn’t. He tried to love me when I was loveable, and I wondered if I could keep it up. He tried to love me when I was un-lovely, and I didn’t believe him. He tried to be my constant, only the more constant he was, the less worthy I felt, and the more sure I was that I would mess it up.

Some nights, when sleep wouldn’t come, I would look at him and wonder if his next wife would be better. After I was dead and gone, she would love him more. She would make him happy to come home. She would make up for all these wasted years with a crazy wife who probably needed medication.

Yet all that time, I cried inside because I wanted to be that wife myself, and I couldn’t. I wanted to be the cherished one. I wanted to be the one who made his life sweet and beautiful. I wanted to be his partner, encourager, supporter—but I couldn’t seem to patch myself up long enough to hold the love it would take to be so lovely.

The truth was, love made me more uncomfortable than just about anything else in the world. I couldn’t control it, couldn’t hide from it, couldn’t keep it where it belonged. Love was wild and bold and pursuing. It overlooked brokenness and brought out beauty. I didn’t deserve that, and I knew it.

What’s more, I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe anyone could overlook my flaws for long. I didn’t believe my husband could. Or my children. Or even God.

Not really.

I longed to feel cherished, but I was utterly unable to accept it. A person could wear himself out with the pouring, and I would only feel a drop of it. He could be utterly doting, head-over-heels in love, and hopelessly romantic, and it would not be enough.

The deeper into love I got, the more broken I found myself to be.

But love is relentless. And sometimes, God uses a husband’s love to soften the cracked ground so the Father’s love can soak in.

My husband did not go away.

He did not love me only when I was lovely.

He did not withdraw his love from me when I wasn’t.

So why didn’t I feel it? Why didn’t I feel cherished by a husband who cherished me?

I began to look into my heart, and the cracks began to show: I did not feel loved by my husband because I did not feel loved by God. That is something a good Christian girl was supposed to learn, and young, but I was busy learning other things.

I understood Jesus loved me enough to die for me because if there was one thing knew, it was that I was a sinner. But to understand the depth of the Father’s love, the kind of love that chose to love me in my unloveliness? That was something I simply couldn’t grasp.

And because I could not understand God’s love, I could not accept my husband’s. My husband could never love me enough.

Only God could do that.

Only God did do that.

I had been expecting my husband to meet a need in me that was never his to meet. I did not feel cherished by him because I did not understand that I was treasured by God. The deep longing in me to feel like I was worth something could never be met in the husband who married me unless it was first met in the Christ who purchased me.

That purchase had nothing to do with my worthiness or loveliness or holiness, even though I kept trying to make it so. He chose to set his affection upon me knowing full well that I was broken and wretched, unholy and imperfect. He even knew that most of his love would be wasted on me, and he loved me all the same.

There was no need to hide from that kind of love. He already knew me. He knew I wasn’t really funny, couldn’t stay pretty, and was cranky without coffee. And he decided to love me anyway. God chose to love me.

If God chose to love me, could I ever make him un-love me? Was there anything I could do to make him change his mind?

Never.

In spite of my brokenness, he would never go away.

He would not drop me when I failed.

He would not replace me with someone more lovely.

He could not because he chose not.

It was the very thing I had wanted all along, but couldn’t see that I had. I was completely accepted and loved.

I was cherished

When I understood God’s love for me and was secure in the know that I could not change it, no matter what I did, I could finally begin to see and accept that I was also loved by the man who had chosen me. All those years, when the love poured out through my cracks, and he could not make me feel loved enough, I was already chosen and loved beyond my wildest dreams.

I was cherished.

Keeping No Record of Rights

The first time Jenny came to church, she wore her neediness like an only dress. You could see where it had been mended over and over again along the same creases, and the places in the hem where pride had been stuffed in to hide the holes.

For five minutes, I loved her with a godly love. I cared about her burdens, and I carried them. I took her into my home and sat her on my couch and thought to myself that it didn’t matter what kind of broken she was, I could love her back together again. It was all very good and terribly Christian.

I’d send her home with a casserole or a hand-me-down for her daughter and all the while, I thought I was sewing her up better than any seamstress she had ever known before.

Then the day came when all the stitches ripped out and the fabric I had tried to save disintegrated in my hands. It cut me wide open in a way I didn’t know fabric could and I watched all that neediness dissolve into nakedness and all that nakedness reveal a horrible disfigurement that I was vain to think I could cover up with a casserole.

It smacked me hard and I stumbled back. I loved her…how could she not love me?

“I am not your project!” she had yelled on her way out the door with nothing on.

“Good,” I thought. “I don’t need a project.” But I said, “Of course not. You’re my friend.”

“Really? We’re peers?”

Well, no…

I paused to think of something sufficiently pious to say, but in that split-second, she opened her mouth and vomited back every good thing I had ever done. Every bit of my love had been chewed up and churned over until it was unrecognizable. She spewed the bitter, sour contents of her wrath all over me until it was all out, every single bit of it, and she had nothing left to say.

I stood on my porch dripping in bile and watched her go.

Of course I will forgive her, I thought in the afterglow of my piety. Even as the words came into my head, it was done. She was forgiven. Love keeps no record of wrongs, I reminded myself.

I cleaned myself up as best I could, but my heart ached. I grieved for her, for this person God had brought into my life to love. Only, she could not receive love. I had poured it into her, but it did not sink in. It only sat there and putrefied.

I thought back over all the times I had listened, all the times I had dropped everything and rushed to her rescue, all the nights my husband had to feed the kids because I was feeding hers. How quickly the list of rights began to mount because I had kept track of them all and I really didn’t think I deserved to be treated the way she had.

I was sure of it.

And oh, I didn’t love her very much right then.

Because just as much as love can’t keep a record of wrongs, it can’t keep a record of rights either. It cannot be good and godly and gospel while running a tab.

It is the same in ministry as it is in marriage or family or any time you begin to think someone owes you something for your kindness, anytime you begin to feel that someone should behave better because you behaved the way you ought.

Secretly, in the recesses of my heart, I had been keeping accounts. According to my ledger, she owed me the change I expected to see in her life. What should have been a work of the Spirit had become a work of my flesh. I had the receipts to prove it.

Only it didn’t work. That kind of love didn’t bind us together. It wedged a debt between us that became harder and harder to reconcile.

I piled works all around where grace should have been because it was easier. It was easier to mend her dress than to dwell with her in her nakedness. She was broken. She was offensive.

She needed me to cover a bit of that up.

So I thought.

Only, she didn’t need me. She needed Christ in me. It’s a fine distinction. One makes casseroles and expects a transformation in return.

The other is the transformation.

All my right deeds and all my right words could not do that for her. Only Jesus could do that. The One who redeems rebels as sons and harlots as brides—that’s what she needed to see in me. He does it over and over again and tears up the receipt every time.

But I robbed the cross when I wrote up her debt, as if she owed me anything for the goodness I gave out of the grace I had been given.

Every time I scribbled my good little deeds into the margins of my Bible, I mared the gospel. As if I could add anything to the gospel with that kind of love, as if I could earn my way any closer to Christ than through the work He did on the cross.

As if I could secure anyone to Him by indebting them with my self-righteous works.

The only place for my record of rights is at the foot of the cross, where all my doings are wrapped up in His “Done” and the only thing I know is Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

It is the only record of rights that is truly love, and the only record of rights that will ever be enough.

{31} Return to Me

Return to Me: Day 31 of 31 Days (lalalalala!)

For Day 1, Click on the image above

When Jewel woke from her groggy haze, she saw the imposing castle looming before her eyes. The beautiful home she had shared with her prince was terrifying. It stood for perfection and holiness, and she was returning to its sacred halls as a ruined bride, clothed in the wedding dress she had defiled.

“I can’t go back there!” she cried.

“Jewel, you must go back.”

“But I am ruined!”

“Even more reason to return to the place where you can be restored. Why would you resist his love when you need it most?”

She was sick with dread. She had not considered what it would be like to return to her prince, covered in filth from the Enchanter’s kingdom, because she had not considered that she might be wrong.

Now her Advocate was leading her right through the gates, right past the sturdy walls where her betrayal was set in motion.

“Just put me down somewhere,” she pleaded, “anywhere.” She remembered her life in the shadows, when Obscurity ruled in Jewel’s place, and she longed for some of the old, comfortable anonymity. She thought if she could live on the fringes, tucked somewhere in the prince’s kingdom away from his gaze, she could yet survive the knowledge that she had failed him.

“Jewel, the anecdote for the Enchanter’s spell is the prince’s love. Do not shrink from him now. Do not let the Enchanter have that final victory. The shame you want to wear like a covering for your nakedness is no substitute for the covering that awaits you in him. This is where you must trust him the most. Now, let’s go greet him.”

That’s when Jewel noticed the obvious. She was so intoxicated by her own misery, she had not been aware of the flowing banners and abundant flowers. She had not seen the velvet runner and the colorful flags. Her prince had returned.

“He is here?” she gasped.

“He returned while you were away.”

It was worse than she could have imagined. While she was away, her prince had returned to find her absent. Her prince had returned to find her, not waiting, but wandering into the far reaches of enemy territory. She had no time to clean up before he saw her, no time to make amends and prove her penitence. He would see her exactly as she was.

She wished her Advocate had a slower gait, or that the walk through the village was longer, or that she could command the earth to open up and swallow her whole. She had not felt this disgusted with herself when the prince rescued her from the mud because she had not known him before.

She did not have the same excuse this time. This time, she had gone willingly. She had betrayed him when she knew him.

Just then, her thoughts were interrupted. They were not even half-way up the path when she heard his voice. “Jewel! Jewel! You have returned to me! Everyone, she’s here! My bride is here!” She saw him running, royal robes flashing, to embrace her. Great, joyful tears welled up in his eyes. “You have returned to me.”

Return to Me

The people of the kingdom rushed out of houses and shops at the sound of their prince’s voice. They gathered around Jewel in stunned silence. They were shocked by her appearance. It was not hard to tell where she had been. Some looked away, embarrassed for her.

The prince was not one of them. He clapped his adviser on the back. “Well done,” he said, “very well done.” The adviser bowed slightly.

The prince turned to his bride, beaming. “I am so happy to have you back.”

Jewel did not know what to say. Her infidelity blazed on her cheeks. “I am so sorry,” she stammered.

“Your Advocate has already told me, and I am glad. I can do something with ‘sorry,’ remember, Jewel?”

“But I took your riches for granted and I used the beauty you gave me to lead your people right over to the Enchanter’s kingdom. And I went there myself, looking for the ill-gotten riches of my old life. Only they weren’t there because they weren’t real, and now I have nothing to show you but the dirty rags I have made of the wedding dress you gave me.”

“Come here,” he said, but even as he said it, he moved to her as if he knew her feet were rooted to the ground and could not move. Then he spread out the corner of his royal robe over her filthy wedding dress. The rich purple of princely garments reached around her, wrapping her in radiance. Her guilty rags were completely covered.

Wonderstruck whispers rippled through the throng.

“All along, your beauty was found in me. You were rich because I am rich. That goodness you saw in the mirror was my goodness at work in you, Jewel. It was not your own, as you supposed it to be. Apart from me, you are nothing. That’s why your excursion to the Enchanter’s kingdom was in vain.”

Jewel studied her feet.

“Neither can you take anything from me, Jewel. You cannot shame me. Your ugliness can never mar my beauty or my goodness. I have enough beauty and goodness to cover it all, and I have covered it.”

“But you are just, too. Not just beautiful and good. How can you take me back, as if what I did was of no consequence?”

The prince’s face grew serious. “Well, there are consequences, Jewel, and there was a punishment. You could not have borne up under the punishment, so I took that for you.” He turned his back to her, and Jewel saw for the first time the fierce marks of dragon claws and the brutal scars where fire licked his flesh.

Tears flooded her eyes.

“As for consequences, well, you could have been living richly this entire time, Jewel, but you chose poverty instead. I think you can see the consequence in that.”

Jewel nodded, sober and heartbroken.

“But Jewel, return to me, and I will sweep your offenses away like a cloud. I will clothe you with new garments, and I will love you with an everlasting love. For I am gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love, and relenting of evil. You have tasted my mercy. Now drink of my grace.”

She fell into his arms then, and the people erupted with shouts of praise. Only their prince could take a story so hopeless and make it glorious with grace. Only their prince could take a twisted, sorted tale and turn it into a Happily Ever After.

THE END
*Only, this is not the end, not really. This series will be published in its entirety in e-book format for easy printing or reading on electronic devices. The e-book will included bonus content, including study questions and Scripture references. For updates, please follow me on Facebook or Twitter, or subscribe by e-mail.