A teenager I know confided in me a few weeks ago that she feels her parents are disappointed in her. That she is not living up to their expectations and that it hurt her heart. I think her exact words were something like, with tears in her eyes, "I'm not sure they really love me, and I think they want me to be different before they will really be proud of me."
And, as I teared up with her, my thoughts (and my hands) instinctively went to my belly. Oh, honey, I thought. You have no idea. You have no idea how much your parents love you. Pray for you. Worry over you. Dream about you. Work for you. Cry with and for you. Physically feel your pain as you're hurting. You have no idea how their love for each other is manifested in you---how much you are the culmination of everything they have been working for their entire lives. You have no idea how fully intertwined your happiness is with theirs. How they cannot even imagine life without you. How they would take a bullet without even thinking about it for you. How they would give their kidneys for you. And images, like flashes, came into my head of the (I'm sure) hundreds of sleepless nights, thousands of diaper changes, endless meals, unrelenting laundry, (and the list goes on and on and on) that these parents had done for this child.
I was thinking, you have no idea how ridiculous that statement is that you are making. They could not possibly love you any more, and there is absolutely nothing you could do that would change that love. And they have proven it to you over and over again--how could you possibly not know that they love you like this?
And then. It hit me. God describes himself as our Father----as our parent. And I was suddenly convicted. How many times have I asked this exact question about God? How many times have I wondered, "Does He really love me, or is He mostly just tolerating me?" How many times have I thought I needed to get my act together in a certain area of my life, etc. before I could come talk to Him? How many tears have I shed that were just as ridiculous as this young girl's?
God is our parent. He loves us in this self-sacrificial, fierce, almost ridiculous way that parents love their children. It is an active love, one that goes through pain and suffering for His children. One that aches for relationship with them. One that would do anything, even give up His own life, to be with you. The current you---not the "new and improved" you that you hope will one day exist. I hope you know that and dwell on that today. It was very convicting and encouraging to me.
