Real Love… The beginning patchwork of something beautiful
Love….. such a word in our culture.
Often it is just that, a word. In the same breath that we say we have the deepest and most adoring love for someone we also so passionately proclaim the love we have for the new Taco Bell Doritos taco. We are not only a culture that doesn’t understand true love but we don’t even have the words in our language to begin to understand it.
While you may have high hopes that today I am going to give you all the answers that your heart has been longing for for so long – the things that, when heard, they will instantly make everything come into play and make sense – well… I will be letting you down today because I don’t know either. ( I know you are thinking… wait what the heck?!? I thought this was going somewhere) ”It is, and it isn’t” would be my answer to that thought.
I am going to share with you where I am in my journey of learning what real love means and then I will also be sharing with you somethings we have in store over a period of time to open the door for others to step in here at the nothings and give us a small glimpse into this huge idea of love.
Valentines is coming up in our american culture and for a 29 year old girl who isn’t married I am supposed to be obligated to hate this holiday… The truth is I actually don’t mind it; it is kind of fun at times. But I do have small moments in which I do feel a strong emotion of dislike about it, mostly in stores. But, when I stop and look at the motive of why I have this strong emotion, I get a glimpse into who I really am and where I truly am.
It is the nagging reminder that there is something greater out there that, at moments, feels like I am the only human that hasn’t figured out the formula to gain access to it.
But the truth, when I stop and cry out to the Lord, is that I just don’t understand true and real love.
I have to remind myself often that what I see around me in February every year isn’t the truth I should be looking for. Which can I add, that February is the same month as my birthday. So somewhere in the month I have a moment where I feel robbed by Saint Valentine. Then at some point I usually lash out irrationally at him and how he had to be so great as to have done a holiday in MY month… but then I move on and realize it wasn’t his fault he was just trying to do good in the world. So, in order to save face here… Way to go dude!
Now, back to my point. Often what we see in this love emphasized time is not the real Love of Jesus. Jesus talked about love being the very thing that causes us to lay down our lives for another. How can that love be the love we celebrate with a heart shaped balloon that says Be Mine? That is the key it isn’t… it can’t be.
I am not married as I have said before, but I have loved and lost; I have family and close friends so when we talk about the love that lays downs one’s life, that I can get behind and understand. The Lord has had me on a journey for over a year where he has been talking to me and moving in my heart and mind to really understand Him as a Bridegroom. It has been a challenging concept for me, yet so powerful. I have been in John 17 a lot, and the first time I ever read it from the perspective of what a husband is supposed to be I understood more than ever real love.
“While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the scripture might be fulfilled.’ -John 17:12
Here we see something so familiar… while I was with them I have kept them… I have guarded them…. Will you keep her in sickness and in health… This is Christ’s commitment to us just as vows often hold a husband and wife to commit to one another.
This is real love…. The love that keeps us… the love that guards us to no end to the point in which not one of them has been lost.
This is what real love is beginning to mean to me more and more not just from a person to person perspective but from my Savior as well. That He desires to keep me and guard me and not just me but all. This is also meant to be a resounding definition of real love. A love that holds fast to the commitments it makes and the love that isn’t always easy, but always powerful.
This is the start here at the busynothings where we are going to be walking down a path to discover stories of those who have either grabbed onto, understand a small piece, or have experienced a shred of what this real love looks like in this fallen and broken world.
Gracie Martin will be our first post tomorrow and she will be sharing several chapters in her story of earthly love that has done nothing but bring glory to the Lord and helped many others around her and her husband understand how the Lord wants to reach beyond the boarders of heaven and shows us each day this real love.
This is how you will find us most of the time… laughing over something ridiculous… =-)
Photography by: Angela J Photography
Gracie, Jacob and I have been friends for 4 years. I was great friends with Jacob before him and Gracie dated and as Gracie came into the picture the Lord truly knit our hearts together in wonderful ways as friends, counselors, and sisters for one another.
I was honored to get to be a small part of their relationship and help them walk through so much individually and together in many aspects. I was honored by getting to stand with them at their wedding and still to this day will never forget the feeling of victory in the room as they married in front of many who knew the journey they had come down and had full faith that the Lord would use them in mighty ways.
Gracie is a passionate person in all that she does. She is a person who loves well and who hates to be recognized for the good she does. I wrote about her and Jacob in a post earlier this year about the NWA: Water Walk, which is a wonderful cause, however, now I am looking forward to all getting to know Gracie’s beautiful heart.
I am passionately excited to see what all her story will bring about in the world around her and in the lives that are stretched out through computer screens all over.
We will also be bringing others to tell their stories in this journey. This is something that we desire many others to join in with comments and if you have stories to contact us and we will give you a place to share.
We desire for ourselves and the world around us to begin to learn from others and understand a real love that changes all it touches.
Belonging everywhere… Settled nowhere
As I wrote in my last post I have been having a difficult time writing lately. I have realized more and more why and the reality is, I have so much to deal with each day that at the end of, or even the beginning of the day, I have had very little brain power left to use on creative outlets of any kind. However, many of my writings come from moments or events in my life that strike me when I am processing them with others around me. During my Christmas break I was having a conversation with Heidi, that I have since had with others as well, about where I am right now in life.
This last year has been a whirl wind of change. It has all been really wonderful and fun, and while I have truly loved every minute, this is absolutely not where I thought I would be this time last year.
January of 2012, I was living in Kansas City, building a great community of friends, making plans to live in the home I was currently living in and talking with my roommates about what the next year would hold for them so we could begin deciding if we needed to find roommates to replace any of them in May. There was no question at that time whether I would be staying or not, but then in the end I was the one who was going to need a replacement. The point however, is that I was settling in, creating roots and making a home for myself and my new life. Little did I know that in just a few months I would be making the choice to uproot my life all over again and begin an entirely new and crazy adventure.
This was a little piece of my KC life. Top left to the right and down: My little house that I loved so much it wasn’t much but it was ours. My friends singing and playing. An amazing snow covered night. Me and my roommates loving each other, life and ice cream.
In April of 2012 I moved to southwest Missouri to step into the roll of Director of Barnabas Prep at Camp Barnabas.
I love my life!!!! So very much. I love what I am doing each day. However, the place that I am finding myself is a very interesting place in which I have never been before. ( Which is saying a lot for me – not out of pride, just out of fact – I have done a lot in my life and for a season to be totally new is exciting and awesome to see how the Lord can continue to surprise me with my life.)
I am in this weird limbo where I belong many places but I am not completely settled anywhere. I live full time at Barnabas with all our people so I have a place to call home and a community surrounding me so in the truth of a settled place this is where I live and belong. The thing is, that this is my living community and each day is truly all about relationship, but I am still the boss/leader which makes this community and these relationship different most days.
My life where I get to just be Sherryk is spread out between three different areas, Springfield, NWA, and Kansas City. These are the three places that I hop between in terms of meaningful relationships that are not about my job. Most of my co-workers with Barnabas who are all good friends live in Springfield, my life long friends and family all live in NWA, and the same kind of relationships are also in Kansas City. So I have been in all three places this year off and on.
I love everything about each place and that is what makes it all so difficult!
My current life. Top to right down: Enjoying sitting around a fire with students and staff while one of our students lead a bible study. Me and one of my students at the airport. The Barnabas staff… I love everyone of these people so much! All of our students filled shoe boxes for operation Christmas child and they loved getting to give to others.
I am in each place long of enough to still have deep relationships, but not long enough to truly be invested anywhere.
I have felt from the Lord several times Him saying that He just wants me all to Himself in the season and I have had several people in my life speak the same thing which has been simply confirmation to that very feeling. I don’t completely know what that means and why this is the Lord’s heart for me right now but, it seems to be the truth.
I am still loving it but, there are moments that I miss just being in one place and settled but then when I really stop and truly think about it, I am living such a great adventure each day!!!!
I have no idea on a regular basis what my day is going to hold. My job is truly an adventure each day but then everything outside of that time is also this element of just going and doing and letting the Lord work.
In this time I have had: amazing conversations; times of hanging out with people that I would have never hung out with; amazing times of worship and prayer with people I don’t normally get to worship and pray with; such amazing times of being a source of adventure for those around me and them getting provide adventure in my life; and just times of sweet peace and joy.
This time is amazing and challenging all at the same time. Full of life and people and yet, a little lonely. Blissfully satisfying and yet, missing something at moments. It is an everyday experience of contradiction. However, when I really stop to think about it and pray about it all, I truly wouldn’t have it any other way right now. It is a rather beautiful place to be.
I still have desires and dreams for things but for now I am simply loving this strange world of belonging everywhere.
