Awkard Tattoos

As I wrote my last (imperfect) post, I started to take a detour that I decided to cut out and make an entirely separate post another time. So, without further adieu, here's my bunny trail from the post-it note post...

How does answering "Yes" to the question, "Do you know that I love you?" mean for our relationship with others? In my last post, I talked about how answering that changes ourselves and our relationship with God, but the more I thought about it the more I contemplated how this effects my perspective of other people--or how it should effect my perspective.

Answering “Yes” for myself has really convicted me that the answer is “Yes” for other people too and if God loves and desires fellowship with other people too, then in what way am I called to fellowship with them? It’s just really about seeing people through God’s eyes and with His love. I love that Brandon Heath song Give Me Your Eyes. If you haven't heard it, you should check it out but here's the chorus:

Give me your eyes for just one second,
Give me your eyes so I can see,
Everything that I keep missing,
Give your love for humanity.
Give me your arms for the broken-hearted
The ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me Your heart for the ones forgotten.
Give me Your eyes so I can see.

If we have God's eyes for people, then we would see how much He loves them and desires fellowship with them. Now, that sounds great. To do list: see people as God sees them and love them as He would--Check, right? Not so easy. I don't know, maybe that is really easy for you (and if it is let me know how you do it) but it's difficult for many of us including myself. To be honest, I'm kind of a hateful person deep down. Sure, I seem nice most of the time and I do truly care about people but there's still that sinful part of me that judges people, is unforgiving, impatient, envious, disconnected, short tempered, selfish and fails to encourage people. These are hard habits to break!

To see people with God's eyes requires us to forget every perception, prejudice, and past experience. It really makes me appreciate that whole, "no record of wrongs" thing. Thankfully, God is big enough to see me with all my faults and failings and still love me. I just pray that he helps me to do the same with other people. A little refresher course on love more for myself than anyone else...

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.- I Corinthians 13:4-7

As many or some of you may know, I have a tattoo (gasp!). It's on my wrist and it says "Love." I had a lot of reasons for getting this particular tattoo. First, I wanted to get something with meaning and significance. I believe that love is the core of existence. God's love for us, our meager attempt at reciprocating and duplicating His love, etc. I mentioned in my previous post how there are those things that you've said that you look back on and think, "What an idiot." Okay, that's not exactly what I said but just go with me on this one. It was not too long ago (within the last two years) that I sat in a room filled with my friends (after Bible study I think) and declared that I did not believe in love and that in fact it was a fictitious creation of desperate people trying to find solace. Oh, and what idiots for buying into that. Yeah, so add bitter to that list above. I cringe thinking back to that now because, let's face it, that was dumb. But I am grateful that God has worked on that area of my life and continues to instill in me that love does exist and that my perspective has even shifted enough to place it as the "core of existence." I do believe in love and in the power of God's love to transform the world, even my pathetic, rebellious heart.

So, when I reach out to people I hope that it is, as my wrist states, out of love. Because otherwise, that makes that tattoo *really* awkward :)