Love is Wasteful (written January 23, 2021) - Blog # 20

  To My Soul,

            I have found my one. It’s strange how we can be so blinded to what’s right in front of us, yet here you are. You are the love I have waited my whole life for and more. When I used to think I was too damaged to be loved, I carried the weight of my baggage until I met you. Fingers calloused from holding onto the wrong people. Walking around with whatever ashes of my heart I salvaged from the fires left in the people I once called mine.

When I am broken, I only look for broken too. It’s what feels right. I hurt them, they hurt me. I walked home that day wondering if love was so ugly, so wretched and painful. Love that makes me scream from the top of my lungs in the middle of a crowd. Love that holds veiled threats against my throat before slitting me open anyways. Love that devours all the good in me, if there was any in the first place. Love that wakes up one day and chooses to leave me then turn around to beg and stay before leaving again.

I wish I could say I never loved them, but if I never loved them I wouldn’t know how I actually love you. Not because I am any good, of course. It’s only because you love me when there’s no love you need from me. You are whole. Complete. Good on your own. You are stunning, altogether beautiful, and you already know that. 

Radiant—the sun is but a glimpse of your imagination, a reflection of your goodness—and all I want is to bask in the glow of your warmth. I sunbathe in your patience and squint my eyes from your unabashed kindness. I am never greedy for your affections because you withhold nothing from my reach. I am absolutely loved by you.

I want you to know that I’m sorry for the days I’m not sorry. For the ways I push away the bleeding heart you offer in your hands. I am nothing but a hypocrite for wanting love then rejecting you. I lose myself in mind games, in the sweet nothings of sinners cajoling in my ear. Like pennies rustling in an empty tin can, I am nothing but a clanging gong of fallacious declarations when I say I love you then turn around and leave you broken hearted again and again and again and again and again and again and again.

I know that you should go for your own good. Loving me brings you nothing but grief. It is so ugly, so wretched and painful to be loved by someone like me. I am helpless to the call of my treacherous lovers. I run to them without thinking, desperate for their grip on my throat because death can taste so sweet before my last breath. I chase after the shadows of old flames that haunt me, and I wonder why I am left burned every time.

It would be cruel to expect you to stay and wait. People laugh at you for loving a fool like me. They sneer at your love. Stupid wasteful love. I know you deserve better. You don’t need me. You should have left a long time ago. I should have drowned in my hopelessness. You should have left me the way you found me. You should have let me die here all alone. 

...

So, why do I turn around each time? 

My footprints are still fresh in the same path I always take when I run home to your waiting arms. I know you’ll be waiting. I know exactly where you wait for me. Each step I take holds the weight of promises only you can give to me. There is no doubt in my mind that you are waiting so I go to you. Sometimes I come scared, afraid that my dirt and shame will stain you. Ruin your beautiful. So, why do you let me turn around each time? 

Only you are my safety. Only you are enough to take away the pain. I am ruined by your forgiveness forever because the truth of the matter is I’m the one who needs you. Nothing compares to your love. I know what it is like to be loved by you and no one in the world will ever come close. I am down in the pit without your love. I am not enough unless you come and make me whole with your love. There is no one who will ever love me like you do.

Love makes you a fool because you waste everything for me. For my sake, you forsake your crown for a cross, and I know you’re not sorry. You smile with brevity and ease. The universe in the palm of your hands. You trade it all in for love. You strip away my guilt and shame for my freedom in its place. You sacrifice the perfect life to be in mine. You, You, You—it is always going to be you. I will sing of your love forever. I will spend my eternity in your embrace. Every day that I have breath in my lungs, I will be able to say I know what it’s like to be loved by you.

...

To my one, 

you no longer have to wait for me.

Author's Note (7/22/21):

I have been thinking a lot about love. I have been thinking about how wasteful love is because for the person who loves, they have to sacrifice and give and pour into, not requiring it to be given back to them. I remember Higher Calling 2020, our annual winter conference, and this was the last message before we went home back to our lives.

David G told us "Love is waste", it is given because that's what it does, it is poured out for undeserving people, it is not measured and rationed, and it is a waste to trade what is perfect and whole for what is sinful and broken. Yet, that's exactly what Jesus does for us. He 'wastes' his life on people who send him to the cross. Not only does he give us what belongs to him, he is happy to do so. Why would anyone do something so dumb?

I searched up "love is wasteful" in my Google documents, and I came across this piece you just read. That idea stuck with me from 2020 until now because of how God's love is nothing like the love I have ever known or given. It is so strange for me to even try to put into words how ridiculous His love is because of who His affections are for.

I think of my friends who date guys who, I think, are not worthy of them. In a similar way, I think about why God loves us so much.

God is whole and complete on His own. He's not lonely. He's not desperate. He's flawless.

It doesn't make sense for Him to love us then, to not give up on us, to keep looking for us even as we run away.

My own love is so limited. It changes with the weather, the time of day, what I ate, when I ate, who I talked to, what's my schedule, etc. When I experienced how steady and unchanging, God's steadfast love is I was so amazed. Love for the sake of love. Love that is regardless of the object of its affections.

My love is so results-based. I'll love who is kind to me. I'll love the person who showers me in compliments or remembers my birthday. I'll love if that love returns back to me otherwise I'll be quick to leave. That's the kind of person I am, and God has changed me and continues to change me.

I want to waste my life on love. I want to love when it doesn't make sense. I want to love when it's not given back, when it's hard, when I don't feel like it, I want to love. I can't do it on my own, even if I tried, but God gives me what love He has for us and then I can't contain it if I tried.

Love has to express itself. It has to be shared. Love that brings so much joy it can't be contained. Love that would give everything for the sake of what other people will say is worthless.

Love doesn't make sense outside of itself. What I mean by that is love only makes sense to itself.

As a Christian, I will do things that make sense to no one but me and other people who know God. I will spend my time reading a really old book written thousands of years ago. I will spend my time talking to a person I can't see, hear, or touch (yet).

I will sing songs every Sunday morning of love and praise instead of sleeping in and getting work done. I will tell people they should believe in a man who was fully God and fully man, never sinned, who died on a cross and rose again for them.

I will tell them that they can do the same if they believe. I will do things that will make me stand out and receive rejection for it. I will lose opportunities to advance my career or my life goals because of this love.

To other people, maybe even other Christians, that's a waste of time or a waste of a whole life. That's okay, I'll get over it. I pray and hope that one day we will all understand the true outpouring of God's love onto us. Until then, I will waste myself on love because love first wasted itself on me.