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by: Angie .. if I couldn’t move myself beyond this cycle then God most definitely had nothing to offer me. --------------------------------- Ah!  Where does one begin when talking about their relationship with God?  While I have several specific instances in which God has revealed Himself to me, none of them would have been possible without His love and forgiveness.  There was a time in my life when I prayed for forgiveness regularly, I took communion routinely, and even thought I was forgiving to others.  The reality, however, was quite different. I lived in a horrible cycle of self-defeating comments, of internal and external judgment, and hate and discouragement.  Truth be told, I had no way of fully grasping this concept of pure love and grace.  As an imperfect human, I didn’t understand what it meant to have my slate wiped clean.  I didn’t understand the premise that all discoloration was washed away white as snow.  I didn’t understand that God loved me fully and completely; that in His eyes I am not the fragmented person I felt like.  I didn’t understand this because I was incapable of such powerful expression myself.  I still held the grudges of my past, which I stated as being released.  I still held on to my pain and misfortune.  I held the bitterness of my own mistakes.  I held the resentment of the mistakes of others.  Within this cycle I was able to justify God not loving me.  I was able to justify my unloving behaviors and actions, and those of other people.  After all, if I couldn’t see the love, if I couldn’t feel the forgiveness, and if I couldn’t move myself beyond this cycle then God most definitely had nothing to offer me. This went on for a while.  The worst times in my life.  I sat in a place of pure darkness, a place of pure misunderstanding.  What was it that finally pulled me out of this never-ending path that I’d worn?  It was love.  It was God’s constant revelations of what love was and what it was not!  It is not what the world tells us it is - not self-seeking, lustful or fleeting.  It’s not within us, but within God.  Instead, what love in is Christ truly about – sacrifice for ALL (not just me, not just you), unconditional (through good and bad), non-judging (while right and wrong), all powerful (derived solely from God)– starts with us, individually.  I realized that in the command to love your neighbor as yourself, the sequence requires that you must first have a full and total appreciation for who you are in Christ - a loved being.  You must go beyond what you feel for yourself or how you perceive other’s feelings for you.  Recognizing your lack of control, you must acknowledge your imperfections as the reasons for love, and within those are the reasons to extend it further.  By finding your own special place in God’s heart, you are able to realize the special-ness in each person you pass every day of the week.  He doesn’t just love one of us, He loves us all.  You see, I had to learn to accept that Christ died for ME.  That this amazing, unique gift of love was meant to free me.  But with this freedom, I am meant to recognize how unjustly it was given to me - that I must be just as open to sharing that love with others.  First though, I had to open the gift and I had to accept it, which meant that I also had to let go of everything that I’d held onto.  Everything that I thought defined me and my each of my relationships.  By accepting that love that comes with forgiveness at the ultimate expense, I have no choice but to extend it, unconditionally, to myself and to others.  So I started small.  I caught myself with each negative self-talk comment that I made and I said “As true as this might be, a bigger truth says that I am forgiven and loved”.  I began to give myself and my imperfection a break, the break offered by the cross.  The freedom that came from that began to flow over into my personal relationships.  When I realized the release of my own anguish, I began to see the need for it in others.  So, with every judgmental comment/thought I began to say “As true as this might be, a bigger truth says that they are forgiven and loved”.  That affected my actions.. and now, before I act, I stop and ask myself “Where is the love in this?” I don’t always get it right and still have my moments of frustration and judgment, but even in those times I can look to a bigger truth, that we are all forgiven and loved in a way that goes beyond our comprehension and in a way that offers such freedom, to pass it up is to choose a life in a self-defeating prison, but to accept is to choose a life of love! Angie is a social worker in Minneapolis, so filled with love and compassion of God that she hopes it spills over and impacts the world around her. View the story online at: http://www.storiesaboutgod.org/index.php/stories/story_page/where-is-the-love/

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