What is love? My eternal quest.

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I have always had a troubled relationship with our Lord. This started when I was very young, six in fact. On one of my last days of Kindergarten, I came home on the bus from school and found my parents at the bus stop waiting to break the news to me that my beloved Granny, my Daddy's mother who lived with us and whom I adored, had died. I was so sad but being so young, I was resilient and didn't really understand what had happened. Apparently death is a lesson that I needed to learn. The next year my Grandma, my mom's mom, died while my parents and I were watching "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" and our car was flooded in, making it hard to get to my grandma's house. Soon after that my Great Uncle Walter died in the middle of the night and I can still remember being scared as someone banged on the door in the wee hours of the morning to let my mom know.

I still didn't understand death, but by this time I was beginning to learn about God and I wondered, "Why?" Not too much, but just a little. Mostly I loved learning about God. I remember when I broke my leg in first grade, I would be anxious to go to the clinic for my check-up because I loved these Bible books they had there, The Bible Story by Arthur S. Maxwell. It's actually a ten volume series and I was always ready to read the next book. I would even go to different departments in the clinic to find the next book. (Which, I admit, had to be a pain for my parents and aunts and uncles because I was either in a wheelchair or on crutches.) I loved the stories. They excited me.

This volume 2. It has Moses and bulrushes. I always loved that one.

So my love of God grew and the "why?" faded in to the background. That is until I was 13 years old. I can remember as clear as it was yesterday. I was at summer camp on Tybee Island, GA. I was so happy. That night we had gone out on a paddleboat and I'd had the most magical time of my young life. I was on top of the world. Despite the fact that I had forgotten to pack sheets and a blanket (a rookie mistake I made in my third year as a camper), I had been sleeping very well when suddenly I woke up and looked over at my best friend, who was sleeping on the bunk next to mine. The front door of our cabin was open, light pouring in around my 4H extension agent. My heart sank to my feet as she came quietly over to my bunk. Everyone else was still sleeping, though my best friend was waking up. I knew it was my mom at that door.

She hugged me tight and whispered in my ear, "It's just you and me now."

That started my years of teenage angst. I was mad at God. How could he take away the most important man in my life? It started a weird ripple in my love language that only stopped when I met my husband. From that day forward my quest was always, "What is the meaning of love?" It led me down some strange paths, but never down the straightest path I could have chosen. Never down the path to God. It wasn't until last night that I actually finally understood the actual true meaning of love.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

John 3:16. Probably one of the most famous, most quoted Bible verses in the entire world. The path was there to me the entire time. I was spending all my time being mad at God and I failed to see what He had already told me. Jesus, His sacrifice, God's love for us is the path to true love.

What I had failed to realize is that God had been mad at us too. He was furious, as the Old Testament shows us.  And really who can blame Him? Here He had created Paradise and handed it to Adam and Eve on a silver platter. And the Devil got in Eve's ear and she and Adam ate the Forbidden Fruit, breaking the ONE RULE God had given them. Just the one rule. And they had to break it.

It shows you how powerful the Devil is. 

So God was mad and he sent plagues and floods and locusts and sulfur rain and all sorts of other pretty awful things trying to punish us for our wicked ways. But we're humans, inherently flawed and very easily persuaded by the Devil to do his bidding. 

Not sure who the artist is here, but I would love to give them credit for this!

That was the Old Testament.

Suddenly you get the New Testament and John 3:16 and God suddenly is nice again. It's all: My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you in John 15:12. Why? Because God didn't like being mad at us. He loved us so much and wanted so badly to reconcile with us that He gave us His son. Jesus's sacrifice on the Cross was the ultimate act of love because He died for our sins. He died so we would be forgiven. He died so we could be reconciled with God and have a relationship with God and the promise of life-everlasting.

It's really a beautiful thing if you think about it.

Romans 5:11 (CEV) tells us: And not only that: we even take pride in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, the one through whom we now have a restored relationship with God.

If that's not love, I don't know what is.

I've lived through my quest to answer this question, but it has led to so many more questions and theories and quests throughout the years. Please join me as I explore this and search for answers. If this testimony touched you in anyway, please share it with your friends, family, church family, whomever.

Please leave me comments on what love means to you. What's your take on God's love for us? What's your vision of love look like? How has your love language been affected?

Thanks and be blessed!