where waves grow sweet

If you had told me when I was younger that my life would be so good that I would cry thankful tears of joy on a random Tuesday, I would have called you deluded. Not only was my life a disaster, the problems seemed to go far beyond my choices and behavior. I thought it was my very self that was broken beyond repair and for my life to have any good in it, I had to be removed from the equation. But if I died, it would no longer be my life. It was a catch 22. 

At a certain point, I came to realize that I truly wanted to have a good life, one that looked so different from the one I possessed, but also came to the horrifying conclusion that I was completely unable to affect that change. It was this desperate tension, the tug of war between desire and need, that finally caused me to wave the white flag and give my life, the whole tangled mess of it, to Jesus.

He entered into my trainwreck of a life as if it was a garden that he was delighted to visit, and began to gently teach me and show me a very undeserved love. I thought that now that I was “saved,” I should get it right. But nope, he didn’t say, “You need to get it right.” Or anything like that. He said, “Let me love you and show you my ways.” It was not easy. I felt so unworthy of love and too fearful to trust. But the desire kept tugging and wouldn’t let me off the hook. There was no going back. 

So I followed him little by little, day by day, year by year, having so little understanding of the transformative power of this beautiful God I was trying to pursue as best as a broken-down person could. Never did he start saying, “Now you need to get it right.” Instead he said, “I got it right so you don’t have to. Just let me love you and show you my ways.” Somehow, along the way, he sorted out the impossible. He set me on a firm foundation. He made my life so incredibly beautiful that I have found myself in tears several times this week in humble gratitude for his relentlessly patient and bountiful love and his ways which are at once so tender and powerful. 

I am not saying I don’t have problems anymore. Or that I don’t struggle. Or that I don’t come up short. I do. But I now see that Jesus resolved the catch 22 by dying on the cross and taking the old sin-riddled, failure-bound me with him. And then resurrected me as a brand new creation. At that moment, though I couldn’t yet grasp it, his perfect righteousness was imparted to me. It’s on this journey of understanding what this means that I have been transformed. While sometimes I wonder if my heart is big enough to contain more kindness, I know I’ve only just begun to see the height and depth and width of this love. 

I have a cousin who once was so hopeless, he also nearly self-destructed and even tried to take his own life. Last Sunday, this same cousin preached the most beautiful sermon at the church he now works at. His amazing wife sat in the front row while his two kids played in Sunday school. His relationship with his family has been restored, as has his joy and purpose. He helps people every day with the patient, compassionate love God showed him. His laughter is one of my favorite things on earth. He is living in the impossible, undeniable radiance of our redemptive God.

I am sharing this because I think there are people out there right now who are without hope, maybe to the point of despair, that their life could ever change or could ever matter. Take heart. It can’t help but change in light of this love. And you do matter, so much, right now, regardless of how you see yourself or how impossibly tangled your life looks. Wave your white flag when you are ready. And one day you too will be crying tears of gratitude as you survey your beautiful life; one that seemed like it could never, ever be within your reach and yet here it is in your very hands.

What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us. Romans 8:31-34

And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. Ephesians 3:18