He loves me. It’s cute how he loves me. Sometimes he’s giddy about his love for me. He wraps his arms around me, shakes me and his voice gets squeaky as he says, “I love you!” Other times, he’s less giddy; he’ll be working on his computer when I’m in the room, sigh and just say, “I love you.” He’ll look at me with the most serious look on his face and state that he loves me like there’s nothing else truer in the entire world. And I love him.
Then, there are the almost wordless times he expresses his love for me in a way that reinforces his deep love: At first, I’ll fight the tears, but they seem to come streaming as I step into the pool of emotional vulnerability. And, following the tears, the snot. And my words encourage the flooding of tears and snot until the two cover my face and his shirt. And then, I am emotionally vulnerable, tear-covered, and snot-smeared. And in the midst of my self-consciousness, he says, “You’re beautiful.”
Oh, this love. It takes my breath away. It confounds me. But I’ve experienced something like this before:
Christ’s love:
That very first time that I fell to my knees to ask God to forgive me, cleanse me, make me whole again. I was a sinner. I was a most imperfect mess. Despite that, he looked into my heart, washed the sin away, and called me beautiful, despite the ugly tears and sticky snot of repentance that had released itself across my face.
And again, the countless times I fell at his feet. He cleaned me up and called me beautiful once more.
He brings me joy as an expression of His love; I can find this in the joyful play of children, the joyful sway of the tree leaves in the wind, the joyful sun shining through the billows of clouds. He loves me in all seriousness; He sends down whispers of love in the rain, during prayer and during praise.
I am thankful to God for His love and for Him sending an extension of His love to me.