My heart is sort of heavy. I carry a lot in it. Sometimes I feel like I’m this traveling gypsy and my baggage just keeps growing the more I fall in love with people…
Honestly, I’ve not really been in one place for too long. I’m sure the longest time I’ve stayed in one place was through four years of high school. I had to ask for it. I asked my dad, who had taken us in for the first time, since I was five, a week before Freshman registration, to keep me in one school. All I’d desired was a glimpse of stability… a glimpse of what a normal life would look like. He gave me that. He made it possible, and he was the only one in the world who gave me what I wanted.
When I turned 18, he trusted me. I was obedient to my father because I saw his sacrifice… I saw what he gave up in order to gain me. The love it took to change his entire life around for me… He wanted us in a safe neighborhood and there wasn’t much safe about my life prior to this. How could I be disobedient?
Well… at 18 he told me that I could now make my own choices, I was an adult, and I could do what I wanted. Pure freedom. And I guess it came down to… what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him and I did all the wrong things, made all kinds of terrible choices, and learned how to receive tiny fragments of love to replace the gaping hole that’s on the receiving end of my heart.
I was messed up… broken… the only love I truly knew… made me feel like a burden. It was my fault that my dad had to give up his job and his comfortable life. Instead of feeling like a treasure, or like I was an opportunity, I felt like no one else wanted me… and there was a man who would sacrifice it all to see me survive, not because he wanted me, but because it was his obligation. I find it interesting how perspective can play a major role in our lives. We think one way, it’s often another way, and everyone else is seeing something different.
Perhaps, my dad had wanted us since the day my mom took us. Perhaps, it was a blessing or a prayer answered for my brother and me to land in my father’s lap. Perhaps, all of my fears and inadequacies were valid. Perhaps, God had a plan.
I think about that sometimes because to this very day, after I’ve been on my own for 15 years, I still haven’t stayed in one place longer than those years in high school. Even on my own… With my willpower and motivation and perfectionistic values, my life was still a chaotic mess. Was chaos my only safe place? Had it become so familiar that any time the storm died down I felt a pull to seek out the next storm?
But every where I go, there are people I fall in love with. Every time I moved. Every new school, new job, new church, new anything… It’s as if God puts this little radar in my chest and when someone I’m supposed to love comes near, I just know it. Something inside me of trusts wholly that they are good people even in their faults. They can betray me… Lie to me… Say crazy things in front of me… And I might be wiser and take a step back to love from afar, but that connection… The deep desire to see them happy… Is still there, real, and deep.
I don’t hate anyone. I don’t hate the men who hurt me sexually and physically… I don’t hate the cousin who refuses to acknowledge me… I don’t hate all the people who’ve turned they’re backs on me. I just don’t hate anyone… Because love is real. Compassion is a part of me. Forgiveness can change the world. But hate… Doesn’t do anything of value. It’s just this chain reaction of consequences.
See, what had been happening was I’d been loving people my whole life, even when I didn’t know it… But never seeing the return. It was there, but I was blinded by fear. I’ve only recently been learning how to turn love into something powerful, wise, and meaningful.
Our love has two directions. It goes out and it comes in. God, who is love, never leaves and comes back… Rather, God is so big and so powerful that He quite literally goes and comes at the very same time. So, when you know Him and you look for Him, it’s actually something that is happening on a constant basis. Unless, you disallow Him altogether.
Without God, giving and receiving love is completely imbalanced. People will hurt you. They will betray your trust. People will make silly choices, and many more times than the average person believes, it’s not our intention to hurt at all. Frankly, it’s ignorance or fear that causes more heartache than it is pure cruelty. Sociopaths are not that common.
With God, living inside of you, His love begins to heal you from within. He also radiates out so that people literally feel Him. And it’s always balanced, because you’re always full. With God, you’re complete and though your mind and all rationale will say that loving someone means they should love you back be it through word or generosity or affection… Your mind is wrong. What you give will always come back to you, it may not always come from who or what you expect.
I look at this image of myself as a gypsy and instead of me carrying all of my baggage… All these people whom I love And every burden… I see Jesus, with His yoke*, saying, “my yoke is easy, my burden is light,” as he carries that baggage for me, and I walk yoked beside Him. (Matthew 11:30)
My love is no longer just mine, so it doesn’t feel as heavy or hard to do. My burdens I no longer face alone, but He goes before me. All of this love… It’s Him and His. He doesn’t really need me, He just wants me because He cares for and loves me. It’s like a blessing from a gazillion angles… He carries me, He loves me, He forgives me, and He suffered for my freedom. What more could I ask for?
(*Side note, a yoke was a device used for cattle in which the more experienced would be tied side by side with the inexperienced in order to train the cattle to plow the land efficiently. This metaphor signifies that Jesus, one with our Father, being the one with all wisdom and power would be our yoked leader, if you will. We are WORKING TOGETHER, as we also LEARN from HIM.)
Scripture Speaks:
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Now to HIM who is ABLE to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to HIS power that is at work within us…
Ephesians 3:20
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Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
Philippians 2:1-8
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We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.
1 John 3:16-18
Rescued Hope 
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