LOVE
Writing this piece was difficult. I did not want to settle for cliché and empty words regarding love. The reality is that love is hard. It’s hard to love in a broken world, especially to love those who have harmed us. As a Christian, this is not an option, it is a command from our Savior who loves us unconditionally. Still, I have wrestled to put words to a page as I felt the conflict of love.
Love is not simple; it requires a dying to self. It is not black and white. It’s painful at times. Love is a choice.
In November of 2017 I sat with my husband at our friend’s restaurant and wrote all the reason of why we should say yes to fostering a teen. The reasons easily filled the page:
Because we are called to do hard things.
Because we are terrified and at peace.
Because I’d rather be uncomfortable than let him age out or go to a group home.
Because God adopted us.
Because Jesus loves him as much as our biological sons.
Because we feel total peace even in the chaos of it.
It was scary and exciting all at the same time. In retrospect, it was easy to say yes. The choice to love was easy.
Seven months later I was again sitting with my husband writing the reasons for both justice and mercy for this teen. The tension of both spilled out onto a page, filled with grief and pain. The tension of advocating for my son because of the injustice done to him crashed against the tension of advocating for a teen who had been tossed through the system since he was six; the same age my son was when this all happened.
It would have been easier to choose one, justice OR mercy. It would have been easier to let my anger, and rightly placed desire for justice, be our only focus. It would have been an injustice to not acknowledge the pain of our son, to not defend and fight for him.
This was my little boy who you stole something from.
It would be an injustice to not speak up on our son’s behalf and share the impact this had on his life and could have on his future.
He will carry the burden of trauma forever.
It would be an injustice to not name the sin and the consequences of those sins.
There is no excuse for what happened.
It would have been easy to advocate for the system to throw nothing but punishment and condemnation at the teen. However, he had already been sentenced a lifetime of that by the sins and abandonment of others. It would have been wrong to neglect the injustice that had happened to him and ignore it.
Jesus loves him as much as he loves our biological sons.
Loving mercy is to show compassion and forgiveness towards someone who deserves punishment. It is the conflict of acknowledging the offense and choosing, not to ignore it, but to choose love despite the reality that it is undeserved.
This is the tension of the Advent season, the waiting. Waiting on the already and not yet; we have Savior who has come to destroy death, but full restoration has not been completed yet. The conflict to love in a broken world leaves us suspended in that tension. To love despite the fact that we might not be loved back, to love even if it’s painful, to love our enemies. To love because Jesus first loved us, in all of our imperfect, sinful mess we have made.
Jesus come quickly….
We want Jesus to come back and make everything right, but the reality is the longer he waits the more people get adopted into God’s family and the fuller the restored heavens and earth will be.
In this season of waiting, do not grow weary to love. Loving despite the cost is a glimpse of the kingdom restored. Love because we are underserving of Christ’s for us and yet he loves anyway. We will celebrate the gift of that love in a few days, let us not lose sight of that in the days, weeks and months that follow.
Father is a title layered with complexity. Some of us have great fathers who love us and keep us safe. Others have had different experiences. Despite this reality, Isaiah describes the promised Messiah, Jesus, as an “Everlasting Father.”