It’s just one simple word, but it pretty much means everything. These four letters define our God.

God is LOVE. He is love. Everything about His person is loving. It’s not the ooey-gooey Valentine’s Day version that the media would sell you. It’s the nailed on a cross like a cursed man version that the world wants to keep away.

Don’t miss JESUS; there is no other Man who is simultaneously God who died for you, who defeated death for all who believe.

Life can be so hard. People so cruel. Us so painfully wrong, steeped in error. BUT God is love. And love still covers a multitude of sins.

I spend long days with beautiful wondrous children…still, what other gift can tempt us to grumble so? Mom or not, we love long, but we are not God and our love pitifully ends in short tempers, impatient tones, grumpy dispositions…. Pride makes the least sense… We are always falling short of glory. 

If God’s love doesn’t flow through us, our love runs out. Cracked hearts that can only be soothed by His softening love.

My woodworker husband and I sang hymns to each other tonight. Flipping page after page…every hymn he knew, we sang… Not because we “have it all together,” but because Jesus brings us together. Torn apart without the discipline of seeing each other, yes, always everyday put the phone down.We laugh at how being tired to the bone makes us…well…crazy pretty much! And I toss my head back and smile at how I try to memorize Scripture, wipe counters, decorate, read books to children, eat up their love, fold laundry, enjoy friends all in one day that began before dawn. And it is glorious AND it is hard.

Don’t let anyone’s idealism fool you. You’re talking to Mrs. Ideal herself (smile) and what I am saying is the truth… ain’t nothing ideal about mommyhood. Unless, missing showers, spit up on that new shirt, getting peed and/or puked, tantrums on repeat, praying to discern the most effective way to discipline the sin at hand for well…forever, not to mention trying to not sin yourself in the process… is ideal to you (smile)… Listen, if you don’t cling to Jesus that little baby, new mom, you love so much will drive you out of your sweet mind, because only Jesus can be God to us…only He can give strength to rock through the night again and sweep the floors one more time.

And you’re pretty much going to live in crumbs, so you can hang up all that perfect  pinterest stuff…clean your home, yeah, and make it pretty, yeah… but the crumbs? They are never going away…never. You’ll be 90 and still finding lost cheerios. I’m not 90, but I just know it’s true (BIG smile).

Those kids will scoop you up and undo your heart and its defenses with their love; they are going to dig so deep…the Lord will reveal some things you hadn’t quite seen about yourself. Look hard, see it, and don’t get depressed! That’s the enemy’s game, no, repent! Get some godly mentors around you. That’s what it is to live godly! To repent a lot, obey a lot, and keep on going no matter how you feel. This I know, the endurers (made that up) win.

If love instructed our days, oriented our lives… we might be different, feel better, relate easier… because

Love takes you out of yourself to places of dying, to places of laying down your life for another.

No one wants to do that, so when we do, we can know it’s God in us, our very own hope, working in us to will and work according to His good pleasure.

God our Father who was pleased to crush His Son…who is pleased when dawn after dawn we take up our cross and follow the Sunrise from on High. 

The Way shines. Walk in His light…love. The only way to walk with Him… I guess you could say, is to die. That’s just what love does in all sorts of ways for a God Who is LOVE.