Daddy's love

 Sure. I’ll be transparent on the internet. Why not? 

I’ve gotta say that the daddy-love of God has been totally overwhelming to me lately. This morning, I was dancing around my room grinning like an idiot until Debra gave me one of those what’s-gotten-into-you looks. I know what’s gotten into me. For the last 3 weeks since we arrived in Minnesota, I’ve been waking up feeling the desire of God to meet with me. It usually pulls me out of bed before I’m really ready to wake up. I go upstairs zombieish but drawn by a strange impalpable sweetness and anticipation. I make coffee and sit on our porch. I close my eyes and before I can even breathe a prayer, a tingling warmth rushes through me and I start to hear God’s voice speaking to me with strength and clarity: Words of affection, affirmation, and sometimes challenge. Often, he gives me a bible reference to read and meditate on. Usually, he just encourages me to soak in His presence as waves of His affection for me as His child wash over me, softening what had been critical, cynical, and judgemental.

It’s starting to change my marriage. I’m quicker to cry, quicker to encourage, slower to judge. One day God asked me, “can you love a woman you can’t fix?” Then I experienced the amazing freedom of not having to change my spouse. As I experience God’s unconditional kindness and acceptance towards me, I’m suddenly free to accept my wife and appreciate her exactly where she is. I never expected NOT judging to be feel so liberating.

Not judging others frees me also to not judge myself. That’s good news because I’ve waged war against parts of my own identity for so long: meek, imaginative, sensitive, tender, timid. And… I’m realizing that the person I ultimately want to become (a man of disarming gentleness and warmth) is the person I swore never to be. Now I want to learn to be tender without fear, to have a soft heart with strong bones and an unshakeable identity rooted in the experience of God’s love and presence one morning at a time.