i fell in love.

“…sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself…”

-Blue like Jazz by Donald Miller

Growing up, I was the girl who talked my parents into letting me babysit instead of going to confirmation class. I feigned sick and slept in more often than not for church.  I saw rules. I saw go and check your Sunday ticket. I didn’t see love. Looking back, I like to think love was still there and that I just missed it.

Eventually, I saw love in the girls who became my friends through tennis. The ones who prayed before the matches. The ones who gave me books to read. I saw something different in them.  Something that made me curious. Made me question whether there was something to this thing called Christianity.

Along the way, I fell in love. Reckless, all-consuming, change my life kind of love.  But, the thing is that this divine romance keeps on going.  I keep falling deeply in love each day.

I’m learning and have learned how to love both from those around me and mostly from the Teacher himself.  Sometimes it takes seeing that you can raise your hands in worship to leap into that intimate time yourself. Hearing speaking in tongues to let the words come out of your own mouth.  Witnessing miraculous healing to realize that I can pray BIG and with confidence.

Because, yeah, Jesus…he did some crazy things like spit into some mud and plaster it on a blind man’s eyes.  Telling the crippled man to walk. Or raising a man from the dead.  See, Jesus loved.

And I want to love like Him and let Him love others through me…especially those little ones I get to hang out with this week.

Because I know that I’m thankful for those who went before me…they loved in a way that let Him love on me.  Sometimes a little skin on skin, a look, a word…to teach us to love Him and love each other.

so how has He taught you how to love?