“And after years of hearing the heart-cry of women, I am convinced beyond a doubt of this: God wants to be loved.”
~John Eldredge, Wild at Heart~

Well, I took the advice of what others suggested and sat with someone else besides my family at the potluck. Josh was in Urbana filling in for a pastor. I sat with one of the couples who’d been in the marriage group that he and I led over this past school year. The flowers on the altar today were given in honor of this couple’s upcoming 49th wedding anniversary. In our group we had a semi-regular newlywed couple, along with four other regular couples who had all been married for 35-40+ years.

Earlier this morning I’d texted a woman from church asking if she wanted to come to the potluck. She and I have connected over potlucks before and the jokes we make about having to bring things. I told her I’d made an extra item she could have if she needed something to bring. She texted back and said she and her husband were in Canada on a cruise celebrating their 50th. I told her that was a good reason to miss, that there’d almost certainly be better food there, and to enjoy her time.

It was actually fine and I enjoyed my time too. This couple that I sat with was actually very instrumental in normalizing what I am currently going through with my oldest. On the night of our last marriage meeting, the topic of kids leaving the house came up. In reference to this, this husband said, “I remember there were lots of tears involved”. That opened the door for me to ask, “Can you tell me more about that?” And for the next half hour the wives shared stories of tears and the husbands affirmed.

I was very grateful for that night, because I think it increased my husband’s own awareness and compassion. He’s been very patient with my tears these past months, comforting me when I’m crying out of nowhere again. I know you’re not supposed to compare sufferings with others, but with myself I’ve started comparing seasons, wondering if this is worse than the time when they were all young and little. This is the first time since then that any season of motherhood has caused me to ask this.

From the time when my kids were very little, my heart was full of love for them. The things I did for them, the life I chose and lived for them, the life I chose to keep on choosing for them, the way I poured myself out for their welfare was done for one reason and one reason only–because I loved them. It was done without thinking about my own life or consequence. That did eventually start to come, but it wasn’t there in the beginning. I didn’t know what love was, what all the deepest of loves entailed.

Loving them was the first time I ever identified with Christ’s love. He suffered and gave his life, I was doing the same. I could look at Jesus and also see myself on the cross. Nothing else had even come close to that magnitude. Of pain. Of love. Of sorrow. Of brightness. For where Jesus was, my light was also. And I didn’t do it to be loved back. Loving them, just having them itself was enough. I do wish sometimes they’d love me more, and I can let that go too, because to love someone really is setting them free.

This is off topic, but I’d really like to serve the Lord. Whether up there or down here, I’ve got things I want to do. It’s interesting because when kids are little we talk about how forgiving they are toward our mistakes, and they are. We also talk about how much we lose ourselves, and we do. It can make me sad and make me feel like they did not fully know me. They know what they have seen, but they have not seen it all, because everything could not be seen at once, a fuller grace and truth for more than me.