This is the next post in what I think is probably my unofficial series of “Mother Heal Thyself”. I’m not saying that because I think any healing has taken place in my heart, but because maybe this is removing the rocks from my tomb. At any rate, it’s certainly my wondering how we get from Here to There.
Just something quick that I have rattling around in my brain, two ideals, playing against each other, opposites.
I feel myself pulled in two different directions, for me, I think it boils down to the pull of the world versus the pull of my faith. In my life I boil Christianity down to love. In Matthew 22: 37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” And then there’s John 13: 35, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another”.
Besides the fact that so many people in the church have forgotten love, oi, I know that I am called to love, actually love, Boohoo. I have not and do not believe that I’m called to “fake it til I make it”. Love. I am Boohoo’s mother. I don’t believe that I was “called” to adopt, but I do believe that as someone that loves and follows Jesus that I am called to love. Love. Love. Love. I’m called to love without counting the cost to myself, to love at my own loss, to love even when it’s a sacrifice, to love when it would be easier, safer, explainable, and understandable not to, to love when I don’t want to, to love because He first loved me, to love because He is love, to love because in Him I am new.
I feel that call. I feel it beating in my heart and pulsing through my body. I feel it strengthening my arms and empowering me to reach out, to calm down, to smile, to speak nicely, to show love. I feel the call to love expanding my boundaries.
If the call of Jesus is to love then I feel that the song the world is singing is self-preservation. It tells me that it is good, right, acceptable, logical, and my duty to take care of myself. I need to follow my goals, my dreams, my path and that if it comes at the expense of anyone else that’s okay. It’s my right, it’s my life, it’s my will that matters. If I can do some good along the way then all the better, but I don’t have to, shouldn’t, step too far off my path in order to do that good. The tune of self-preservation is catchy and once it’s in my head it’s hard to get it out again. And those outstretched arms? They wither and tremble when self-preservation is in control, to self-preserve you have to pull back, stay guarded, protect.
I’m trying to dance to two different tunes and I’m getting mixed up (like my examples) and I’m tripping over myself since I don’t know which song is the one I’m supposed to be listening to.
Love.
Self-preservation.
And me.
