Love Your Neighbor

My last post on the Facebook page associated with this blog was back in October. I wrote a post that reflected on the fact that it had been five years since we met and adopted our five kids. I also requested prayer, because, despite the fact that it has been five years, we routinely face what I would refer to as a "challenging" time, with one child in particular. The fact that this happens every year during this season is not lost on me, and yet still takes me by surprise each time. It's not that I am surprised that it's happening, I just forget what season it is until suddenly we are in the midst of the challenge and it dawns on me, "Oh, right, it's that time of year again." 

So I asked, and the people who follow that page prayed, and God intervened. But not in the way you might think. He didn't change the child...He changed me. 

At the beginning of 2021, I started praying that I would want more of God in my life. I didn't know what that looked like or even how to get there, but I knew it was in His will for me to desire it, and so I prayed. And the Lord answered. He took me on a journey over the last 12 months that surprised me, because it didn't involve a change in those around me, but change within me. He broke my cynical spirit and replaced it with eyes to see the brokenness of this world as He does, with compassion rather than judgment.

Around the middle of the year, I started asking God to teach me how to love Him, because I realized I didn't know how to do that. I didn't understand what it meant to truly love God with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength. I "loved" God, but I didn't really know what it meant to be in love with God, in a deeper way than any love I have ever known on earth. I still remember the morning this fall when I woke up and the first thought in my head was, "I love You, Jesus. I LOVE YOU!" And it was said and felt in the same way - but more - as I would have said it to my beloved spouse of 21 years. 

In Walt Disney's 1991 version of Beauty and the Beast, when Beast lets Belle go to find her father, Mrs. Potts softly says, "He's finally learned to love." That was step one. What I slowly began to grasp was that if I didn't know how to love God the Father, then it was essentially impossible to love the people He created who are often not loveable at all. The ones who are nothing like me, who make poor decisions, whose behavior can often feel like nails on a chalkboard, and yet...have been created in the very image of this One I claim to love.

So after praying for God to reveal to me how to actually love Him as He calls all Believers to do (first in Deuteronomy 6:5 and then again in Matthew 22:37 and Mark 12:30), I then began to pray that He would show me how to let that love for Him overflow to my neighbors (Leviticus 19:18, Mark 12:31). My daily prayer was this simple: Father, teach me what it means to love you, and teach me how to love my neighbor as myself. I prayed it first in obedience, and then in faith, and finally out of a desire to be stripped away of self -- because self clearly wasn't working. It wasn't getting through to anyone, least of all the child who was challenging me every step of the way.  

I understand the expert in the law (Luke 10:25-37) a bit better now. Because it's easy to glibly spout off, "Oh, sure Lord, I know what Your Word says...love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. I've got this." But when Christ looks at you and goes right to the heart of the issue - and it is a heart issue - and we try to justify ourselves ("But who is my neighbor?" Luke 10:29), our refusal to look honestly at self no longer works. And just as He did with the expert, He did with me. "You want to love your neighbor, Carrie? Start with the child in your house. And then move on to her friends." Who was the neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? The one who showed him mercy. "Go and do likewise." 

And so, in November of 2021, God broke my heart in a whole new way. It was as if the lenses of self had been stripped from my eyes, and instead of saying what the world would think made sense ("Those friends are toxic, they are no good for you, you can do better!"), I began to say, "Bring them here. Let us love them. I willingly invest my resources (time, money, self) into them, because Jesus thinks they are worthy of His blood and forgiveness." And the child noticed. And when the day came, when I found myself weeping in her room, confessing my years of "gut-obedience love" for her, and sharing that God was changing me, and my love for her was so different now - the authenticity of that was allowed to be played out. 

I will never love perfectly, but I hope that I will consistently love well. Christ's love is perfect, it drives out fear (1 John 4:18), it takes the hearts of stone and turns them into hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). In 2021, God taught me that my neighbor lives in my house. My neighbor is the hard child that God placed in my care. My neighbor is the child who continues to make the same mistakes and poor choices. My neighbor carries my last name. My neighbor is the one who I was ready to write off, and instead, God used her to teach me just how far His love can go. Love God, love people. God will handle all the rest.