bittersweet

What love does to my heart is truly wild. I have been crying for the last day and a half because we left Maryland. I just marvel at the gift of who each of them are every time we go there. Their personalities are all larger than life, and each time they tell a story I experience the joy and the heartbreak with them, following them into the valley and ascending with them to the mountaintop. God made each and every one of them with the intricacies of their personalities, and I have the unique joy of getting a glimpse inside that wonder and mystery of creation. 

 Hearing the boys talk about their dreams, I now have a shell of an understanding of how much God loves us. P talked about his dream of wanting to produce his own music. M expressed his struggles in attempting to build the particulars of a curriculum for the guys at his rehabilitation center. J shared his feelings of intense loneliness, and being reminded of his past failure every time he is somewhere by himself. Just thinking about their desires, and how much I love them, I wanted to do it all for them. I wanted to build P a recording studio and learn how to produce music. I wanted to read the entirety of the rehab course catalog and flesh out the details of a plan for M. I wanted to remind J that he is never alone and that though it is hard, the best way forward is to embrace that fear of loneliness and singleness.

I suspect this is how God operates too. Love creates in you a drive to be generous, to comfort, to operate out of concern for the well-being of the other. The kind of joy that comes from belonging to a community, and giving love freely, is such a rarity in this life that the idea of leaving it and being separated again makes me so deeply sad. It's no wonder God pursues us so endlessly. He just wants us to spend time with Him, because He loves us so much with this perfect, unselfish love that completes our hearts.

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