How can we really love people?

by Laurie Krieg

"Love your neighbor as yourself," Jesus said.  The only way we can love any person is to first experience love in our broken places.  

How do we love ourselves? We need to crack open the doors of our messy hearts and allow the One whose name is love in--not only to the bright and shiny places, but to the dark ones.

Here is how that practically looks for me:

1. Notice emotions
For the last few weeks, I have been feeling…meh. Down. I couldn’t really name why or what the source might be, but I noticed that at the end of every day I felt defeated.
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I did not fail in some specific way. I was not especially struggling with one thing or another, I simply felt…off. I couldn’t name it, but I could see it in the way I was extra snappy at Matt, and generally feeling uncomfortable in my own skin.​

2. Sit down with myself
I needed to sit down with myself to think about what I’m thinking about.

On Saturday afternoon, our daughters were miraculously napping simultaneously for a good chunk of time, so I grabbed my Bible and journal and began to write. “God, I’m feeling…”

I poured out as much as I could. For me, I know my feelings best by writing them (some of you may need to talk or run to think).  “God, I feel like a constant failure. Inside of myself I feel no confidence. I hardly have a day where I do not think, ‘I failed at ____.’” I wrote. “I always see my flaws.”

Through writing I saw that because I believed I could not achieve even one good thing in a day, I failed, and therefore I was a failure. That failure feeling was bleeding onto others.

3. Look backward
I have been taught that patterns of negative emotions we feel as adults often originate somewhere in our past. One way to help today’s emotional upheaval is to look backward with the Holy Spirit. So, we began excavating. 

“God, when did this begin for me? When did I first feel this emotion—this lack of feeling worth?”

A memory surfaced in my mind’s eye. It seemed inconsequential. Nevertheless, I let my mind wander and write it out. I recalled myself in eighth grade, studying hard for a test.  I had created some practice exams, and was doing well, acing them. I felt proud of myself. Not in a, “I’m the best” way, but in a “Hey, this is a pretty cool thing I did here—testing myself and doing well.” 

​4. Listen for lies
But at the same time, I also felt unseen. Like what I was doing didn’t matter, and therefore I didn’t matter.

Let me pause to say that this is not a knock on my parents. They did not come in at that moment and say, “Laurie, what you are doing is worthless. You stink.” I didn’t tell them how I was feeling at all. If they had known, I’m sure they would have felt terrible and loaded kindness on me. But I didn’t tell them. I didn’t tell anyone. I simply felt it, kept that pain to myself, and let the lies sink in. “What I do doesn’t matter. I don’t matter.”

5. Ask the Lord for what is true
Well, this Saturday God wanted to show me again that my pain—and I—matter.

“God, where were you?” I asked after writing for a bit about how I felt about the memory. 

I sat and listened, envisioning him in the scene. I could see him across the room, occupying a space I thought was empty. He was rapt with interest in me. “Laurie, I was right there. I saw how hard you were working. I see it. I notice you.” He both cared but didn’t care about my work. He noticed it, but he delighted in me.

6. Check with the Bible
I worry sometimes that what I “hear" or "see” in these times isn’t biblical. Am I simply feeling indigestion? Or is that the Spirit? The only way to know if it is true—even if God isn’t necessarily verbally speaking to me in those moments—is to make sure the truth of what I hear aligns with the Bible. So, does it?

"The eyes of the LORD watch over those who do right; his ears are open to their cries for help." --Psalm 34:15

"Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed." —Psalm 139:16

"You keep track of all my sorrows.  You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book." —Psalm 56:8

"[T]he very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows." —Luke 12:7​

"There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends." —John 15:3

That last one is the biggest one. The whole concept of the cross—and the trajectory of the Bible for that matter—speaks to his love for his people. This love exhorts us to love others. "Indeed," Milton Vincent said in his powerful book, A Gospel Primer, "I love my fellow-Christians not simply because of the gospel, but I love them best when I am loving them with the gospel!" 

And what is the gospel? Here comes Tim Keller: “I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me."

I sat on the couch for a while, eyes closed, drinking in God's truth and love. I didn’t feel 100% better, but maybe 45%. Matt came up to me as I sat there, meditating on God’s seeing of me, and he asked, “How are you doing?” He knows Laurie+journal+Bible=introspection. 

“I’m okay,” I said. I wasn’t ready to talk about it. Sometimes things are so precious to my heart I cannot share them with anyone for a time.

7. Let people in
That evening, I fought through my desire to isolate and opened up.  “You know when you asked me how I was doing and I said, ‘Okay’? Well, I wasn't...” and I shared.

Matt listened and encouraged me. My heart was already cracked open through the time with God, so I was able to receive Matt's words.  

Often, when I’m drinking in lies about myself, compliments either bounce off my heart or they are the the objects of obsession and worship. But now, because God began the process and was again number one in my heart, I was able to receive compliments from people as a gift. They became worship to God--not to me.

That’s how the rest of the night and following day went down: Laughing with friends felt like God turning the volume up on his words of “I see you. I not only love you, I like you—as you.”  The next day at church, the whole service added more fuel to the love train I was on. Songs spoke to my heart. Conversations emphasized God's love. Small kindnesses of friends and strangers alike seemed to a reflection of Jesus’ seeing me, and I smiled back at him from my heart.

All of this started when I allowed the Healer to do surgery on my heart, and heal places I didn't even know held wounds. 

This is not meant to be a political statement, but a heart statement. No matter our political standing, love supersedes it all. "[If I] didn’t love others, I would be nothing."--Paul (1 Cor. 13:2)

8. Do it again
Today is Wednesday, and the euphoria of the weekend's love encounter with God and his people feels somewhat distant. I have a choice today to either throw it all away as a big fat lie, or remember, reject the lies, and repeat. Perhaps I do not need to go back to another memory today, but like the Israelites, I can recall the truth (and blog about it--hey!), or like David, "tell my soul" to praise God no matter what. Either way, today's emotions do not negate yesterday's truth.

Before I close, you might notice there is a lack of talking about sin in this post. I know. To know God's love fully we must see how he loves us through wounding and through our intentional sinful choices. 

Lord willing, next time I will write about this (AKA: forgiveness).

But today, let’s hang out with Love in our pain, so we can better love others in theirs. 

1. Respond: How do you best experience the love of God? Have you found this type (or a variant) of introspection helpful to really love others? How do you remember moments when you experience the love of God? How do you keep it before you beyond that moment?

2. Journal/Reflect: Is there a random, seemingly "inconsequential" memory that keeps coming to mind for you? Have you ever brought it to the Lord alone or in prayer with a friend? Perhaps the Lord wants to do some healing there...

3. Read: If you wonder why I'm so obsessed with the gospel, read A Gospel Primer by Milton Vincent. I can literally open any page and find a quote I want to share with you. Here's one from page 18: "When I begin my train of thought with the gospel, I realize if God loved me enough to sacrifice His Son's life for me, then He must be guided by that same love when He speaks his commandments to me." I am currently rereading it for the third time.

4. Watch: This quick video is really interesting when considering why doing difficult processes like these do not come naturally. Our brains are not wired to do hard things. We need God's strength to go against our flesh that wants to sit, eat brownies, and watch Netflix all day. (FYI: there is one bleeped-out word.)