Perfect love.

Perfect love.

Perfect love expels all fear. (1 John 4:18)

I’ve known a lot of imperfect love in my lifetime.  Conditional love, selfish love, love that wasn’t really love at all.  I’ve known what it is to fear being intimately known, to be known with all my faults, my fears, my insecurities.  I’ve known what it’s like to fear that if my weaknesses and vulnerabilities were to be uncovered, I’d be abandoned…rejected, alone.

I have been blessed beyond what I can comprehend to experience how perfect love casts out fear in my life, time and time again.  I came into my marriage with a lot of baggage.  When I packed up my belongings and set off to create a home with my husband, things like anxiety, shame, past trauma, and insecurities slipped into the bag too.  Within marriage, the most intimate union we can experience with another human being, I learned what it was like to be known fully and yet loved completely, despite the parts in my life that I had deemed unlovable.

To look someone in the eyes and to share the parts of me and of my story that I always kept covered and to only be met with love in return has brought light into my life that has dispelled lies and shattered darkness.  Although my husband is imperfect his love and care towards me reminds me continually of how perfectly God loves me.  It reminds me that I am greater than the past that has tried to define me.  It reminds me that God has bigger plans and dreams for my life than I could have ever dreamed up myself.

I have been afforded tremendous grace in my life to have experienced the healing that comes from allowing someone close enough to hold the broken parts of me.  I have come to know that on the other side of confronting shame, lies truth, and rest, and hope for a victorious future.  I have come to know that no matter how hard I will it, healing does not come in isolation.  It comes through having the courage to embrace vulnerability and to allow our most shameful parts to be uncovered.

God’s love meets us in our weakness and vulnerability.  We will never be successful at hiding and tucking our broken places away from his gaze.  He sees it all and yet He loves us no less.  It is in this place of being fully known, we discover that we are fully loved.  And it is this love that casts out all fear.