Here is the truth about when I was pregnant with our first baby: I didn’t feel all of the warm connections…I felt like I was carrying an alien. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. This level of attachment lasted up until the day he was born. On the way to the hospital, where our lives were supposed to change forever, I remember saying to my husband, “I hope we like this kid or it’s going to be a long eighteen years.”
Oh, my word. Who thinks things like that? Let me tell you, only people without a clue. We had no clue.
On our way to the hospital that day, we didn’t understand what it was like to love to that magnitude. We didn’t know Henry yet. We had heard about parenting; we had considered it. We had even read books and taken a class. But we didn’t know parenting because we hadn’t met Henry.
When Henry was born, they handed him to me and as his sweet eyes gazed up, love was born. Intimacy was created beyond which words could describe. It was an unbreakable connection. The way life was created to be.
Before laying Henry in my arms, they didn’t hand him my rules of expectations for his life to earn my love. That would have been ridiculous. By putting him in my arms, they were saying to Henry, “This is your mom…she loves you.” and as we gazed into each other’s eyes, that relationship began. It is similar to the way my heart longs to point you to God. “This is your God…He loves you.”
But how do you gaze into God’s eyes? To look into His eyes, to hear what that love is about, ask. It’s as simple as saying, “God, if you are real, I would want to know that.” “God, I know some things about You, but I want to know You.”
If you want to hear more about His love, I am confident that God will speak to you through the Bible. It’s not as tricky as you may think. Start in Matthew. If you need a Bible, I find the easiest version to read is the New Living Translation. You can also get the free YouVersion Bible App, and select the NLT. It will start with a bunch of names about who is related to whom. Get past that. What I want you to look for is love, for our God who loves you.
You may have considered God, formulated opinions, been to a church, or read a book. My comment on the way to the hospital is the same way that most of us initially approach God: detached because we don’t know each other yet.
Our God is a God you can know. You will follow what you are compelled by. You will be compelled by what you love. You will love what you know when you look into the eyes of your God. Open His book. Look, listen, ask Him questions, and look again.
This is the free life. Where I am free because I live compelled by the greatest love story ever written, the story of how God won back what was already His.
This is the free life. This is the life I never knew I always wanted.
