LET’S TALK ABOUT LOVE BABYYYY

My father once told me that he had loved my mother more than he had loved. His exact words were:

“I don’t know how I’ve loved my mother. I don’t know how I’ve loved my sisters. I don’t know how I’ve loved my children—but I have loved your mother more than I have loved.”

Now, my father isn’t a romantic man, nor is he a cold one. Before he said this, I wouldn’t have considered him poetic. But as the contents of his heart came to life through his lips, I wondered what it felt like to “love more than he has loved.”

Because my father has loved deeply and he has loved well—certainly his mother, and even more so his children—but that kind of love is different. It’s instinctual, of little risk. I don’t even know if you have a choice. I don’t remember coming to love my mother or father; I just did. I don’t think they grew to love me either; I think they just did.

But he has loved more, and continues to love more, with his wife. So much so that he can’t quite explain it—only define it through this idea, this word: more.

My father, my mother, you, and I, all have limits on how much we come to know love. Be it through circumstances or a willingness to expand our hearts, we learn of love slowly and continuously until the day we die.

It is a bit of a mystery—knowing love, making room for love—but God, in His kindness, has exposed Himself to us in ways that we can know. In ways most of us can experience throughout our lifetimes. Father and mother, sister and brother, husband and wife, and a dear, dear friend—He gives us these titles, these roles, these opportunities to engage in love with one another. And if we let them, present the depth of His love in a new and continual way, every single day.

“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 (nlt)

When God described Himself as the Bridegroom and the church as His bride, I didn’t really get it. I understood the words, I recognized the sacredness of marriage, but it wasn’t a scripture that came alive to me until I became a bride myself.

Now, almost two years in, I think back on our wedding and wonder: What would I have felt if Credo hadn’t been ready when I started walking down the aisle? What if his shoes were missing—or my ring? What if—God forbid—he wasn’t there at all?

To say I would have been devastated would be an understatement. But more than that, if marriage between Credo and me is meant to reflect the marriage between God and His church, then God desires a relationship with me in the same way a husband desires his bride. He loves me with that same kind of devotion and intimacy.

But that isn’t the only way He loves me. He loves me as a daughter. He loves me as a friend. He wants to be closer than a brother. There are so many dimensions to His love. One could say love is love and it’s all the same—but if you ask my mother if she loves her kids the same way she loves her friends, she’d give you a quick no. If you were to ask any married person whether they love anyone in the world the way they love their spouse, the answer would be a resounding no.

Yet, these are all the ways God loves me.

As a daughter,

as a friend,

as a wife,

as a sister.

This love piles on top of each other and stretches beyond the other. It’s hard to put into words—mostly because I can’t fully understand it myself—but I am someone who is captivated by love: perfecting it, understanding it, embodying it, living in it. And when I try to grasp the depth of God’s love for me, like my father, I can’t quite find the words… but I’m left with this sense of more.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” romans 5:8 [niv]

For anyone who knows me well, ruminating and analyzing are some of my favorite things to do. So when Credo switched jobs and shifted most of his attention to mastering his new field, well, I have been having some feelings about that. I hadn’t realized how much my sense of connection came from our relationship. The talking and touching and laughing, most of my fill happened through him and me.

We had an exchange, quite clumsily at first, but eventually landed with him saying:

“I just need you to understand that giving everything that I have to my work to provide for us and the family is a big part of how I’m loving you right now.”

My desire for connection didn’t evaporate with his declaration. This gnawing desire to be lavished in love daily—in an all-consuming, never-ending, almost suffocating way—only deepened. The way I wanted love, and his capacity for it in this season, felt mismatched. But, after some ruminating and analyzing, I found myself asking, “Isn’t it always?”. Isn’t the love I desire and the human capacity to give it always mismatched?

So, then I asked myself—why am I expecting this love from Credo in the first place? He’s my husband, duh. He promised to love me, to give himself up for me like Christ gave Himself up for the church. But if Credo is modeling his love after Christ, then in my desire for his love, I am actually desiring Christ. And on Credo’s best love day towards me, his blueprint is still Christ. So I think instead of allowing Credo’s love to point me to Jesus, I made Credo’s love Jesus in my heart.

After some repenting, I put God in His rightful place, and then all these new questions started popping into my mind.

Like, how can I not make an idol out of my husband? How can God be the first place I go? How can I abide in Him? Can He show me the vastness of His love?

He didn’t answer any of my questions yet, but He did give me some scriptures to consider.

Romans 8:39 says

“No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed IN Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I have obviously read this scripture several times, but this time, the emphasis was on God’s love being revealed—known, explained, discovered, realized—in Christ Jesus.

It seems pretty simple, but then I started asking Who is Christ Jesus really? The Son of God (Matthew 16:16), yes. He is also the Word made flesh (John 1:14), which makes sense because the Word is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, judging the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12).

So, He did answer one of my questions. The vastness of His love can be found in His Word, which is also Christ Jesus.

Then we landed on a prayer in Ephesians 3:16-19:

“I pray that out of His glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

This part is deep because more than answering the questions I asked, He showed me things that I didn’t think to ask.

How do I obtain power for my inner being? His Spirit.

What allows Christ to dwell in my heart? Faith that is strengthened through the power of His Spirit.

What do I need to grasp the width and depth, and height of the love of Christ? Power—that is found through His Spirit—and other believers.

And my favorite part,

“And to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

I don’t know if it’s my favorite part because it’s confusing or romantic, or both. But in this scripture, the writer is praying for the readers to know something that surpasses their ability to know. Further illustrating that God’s love can’t be contained by knowledge or reason or understanding, it spills over into a dimension that can’t be defined by words or contained by human effort.

It feels spiritual in the deepest sense, kind of like when His Spirit intercedes for us, groaning on our behalf (Romans 8:26). What kind of connection is that? I don’t know what I should pray for— yet His Spirit is connected to my spirit, translating what I don’t know into something that God knows? In a language I don’t understand? It gets more confusingly amazing as I try to write it all down.

“since, then, you have been raised with christ, set your hearts on things above, where christ is, seated at the right hand of god.”

I don’t know that I have any deeper revelation of God’s love for me than when I started writing—truth be told, all I really have are more questions.

But I did realize something about myself. That deep desire for acceptance that I’ve hated about myself since I was a girl, the infatuation with knowing and experiencing love that I thought made me weak, this insatiable desire to be the sum of someone’s total affection— all of it has been this deep guttural cry for the all-consuming, incomprehensible, unquantifiable love that is in Christ Jesus. And, I think, for the first time, I’ve finally heard it.

These thorns I have prayed against and tried to rebuke have somehow planted me right in the palm of His hands.

—
petitioning Him, again and again, to show me just how deep and how wide and how long His love is, and has always been, for me.

So now, like Paul, I’m praying the same prayer: that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people,
to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.