Love on the Other Side of the Likeability Factor

Included in my nightly routine with my kids -- that has been our nightly routine since we brought them home from the hospital -- is some downtime as I read to them. We've worked our way through lots and lots and lots of books throughout the years, and even reread some that we really liked (the Little House on the Prairie books, for instance). 

The stories are nice, but the thing that happens at the end of every day during that time, is love. It sounds trite, I know, but here's the deal: My kids and I (and even my husband, though he's usually not sitting in our little reading circle) collect all the emotions and attitudes and hurts and joys and fun and sorrows we've scattered throughout our day, and we gather them into a safe, tight-knit little buffet of experiences, and then... we let them all go in the safety and security of routine, centered in love.

There's no obvious process. I don't sit my kids down and say: "All right, y'all, think of everything you've experienced today..." 

It's the unconditional love that makes the process work. Even when one of us is grumpy and doesn't want to listen to the story. Even when one of us is tired and falls asleep during reading time. Even when one of us is too excited to sit still. There's still a place to come back to at the end of every day that we can all count on. Always.

When I send my kids off to bed and follow them in to pray with them and tell them goodnight, I always say: "'Night, love you," and they (usually) say: "Love you, too," and that's the end of it.

But the simple "Love you" is so much more than two or three words tossed across a sleepy room, you know? I love my kids. I love my kids. Like... my love for my kids is what makes the definition of Paul's 1 Corinthians 13 love chapter so very real to me.

"Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails" (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).

It's a beautiful portion of Scripture, and one of the most popular ones used for wedding ceremonies. But romantic love is just a tiny portion of the kind of love Paul is talking about. This is unconditional love. Agape love. 

This is the kind of love that reaches out and loves someone else when there is no loving response back. This is the kind of love that pulls you out of bed at 2:30 a.m. to clean up a bed where your child has been sick without snapping at them for waking you up. This is love that comforts in pain, and love that resonates with joy, and love that engenders more love simply because of the fact that the person exists. 

Here's something that seems to be rare these days: This is love that faces down an angry, rebellious child and tells them no.

Wait... what?

But... what if they hurt when you say no? What if they get defensive when you say no?  Telling someone "no" isn't loving.

Oh yes, it is. "Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth." Hey, kids, if you build your playhouse in the middle of I-81, you're going to get hit. But I want to; it looks fun! It looks exciting. If you really loved me, you'd let me.

Sometimes, this kind of love = a big ol' nope. 

And that's hard to do as a parent. It's hard to do in any situation. We not only want to be loved in return, we want to be liked, especially by those important to us, and that's where an important distinction lies.

Sometimes we get so caught up in making sure that our loving holds a likeability factor... that we don't necessarily... "rejoice with the truth." 

Here's the truth: this kind of love that Paul talks about here supersedes any likeability factors. This is the type of love that Jesus carried when He marched right up to a wooden cross and -- even though He holds all the power of the universe in His hands so that with a single word, His cross could disappear -- He let Himself be nailed to the wood. 

Jesus stayed on that cross. Jesus died on that cross. Not because of a single thing you or I have done, not because of any payment you or I might make, not because you or I might like how Jesus looks if He hangs there a while longer... 

But because it's the only way to make sure that you and I... have a way to not die, have a way to understand the complete and eternal nature of His love. 

"Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known" (1 Corinthians 13:12). 

On that cross, Jesus sees us and knows us fully, even if we aren't able to look back at Him with that full knowledge. Yet. But we will. When the "poor reflection" of our fallen nature has been stripped away, when all things are made new on the day Jesus comes again... we'll understand the flawless nature of this type of love.

That gift of life, born out of unconditional love, is there, free for the taking. But... do we understand that we must take the gift to have the gift? Like a beautifully wrapped present under the Christmas tree, sparkly and pretty with our name written next to the bow -- the only way we can have the gift is if we pick it up and open it. Otherwise... that beautifully wrapped gift stays beneath the tree... and stays... and stays... until it's too late. 

He offers His love freely. It's up to us to accept it.

And it's all possible, because He stayed on the cross, because He died on the cross.

When I was in the first grade, we would have morning Bible time, and our teacher would ask if anyone wanted to pray. One of my friends, the daughter of a local pastor, usually volunteered, and every time she did, she nearly always started with: Dear Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for our sins.

Maybe it was cliché, maybe it was memorized, maybe she'd been taught that phrase from toddler-hood, but that has stuck with me. Not one part of the promises we hope in, not one word of Scripture, not one iota of any part of this whole beautiful relationship between God and man would be true...

If not for the love that held Jesus on the cross until He cried out: "It is finished!"

So when He tells me no (and it happens more often than you think), I have security in His love that knows more than I know. I may not like it, but I am going nowhere away from Him, because His love far surpasses His likeability factor.