It all started with dark chocolate...

It’s been sort of an off day. Not a bad day, per say, just an off one. So I reach up into my candy sash that faithful encourages me from my desk shelf, open up the bag of Dove dark chocolate that Emily gave me for graduation, and pull out a small heart-shaped piece.

Normally, dark chocolate is a sure way to cheer me up. It’s especially effective if it’s accompanied by some of my favorite music and knitting or a good book, depending on my mood. I also happen to get a kick out of reading the little sayings on the inside of the wrapper (there is a reason for this, but I’m not telling that story today). So, wondering what little smiles lie inside, I open the wrapper.

“Believe in those you love.”

Oh brother! Didn’t I get that one last time? Really? Is everything in my life coming back to this? This seems to be an intricate part of my current lesson from God. It also seems that I am a very slow learner and am still not getting whatever it is that I am supposed to be getting. Stupid candy wrapper… what does it know anyway?

I guess by now you’re wondering if I’ve completely lost it, or if something really weird was in the dark chocolate. The answer is neither… really, I promise!

Back to the stupid quote… Believe in those you love. What the dickens is that supposed to mean anyway? Does it mean that you believe in them after they’ve lied to you? After they’ve hurt you? Believe in them although they very well might hurt you? Believe in their profound and terrifying ability to make you the happiest person that you know or the most miserable? What?

Again… stupid quote.

Now that I've stopped calling it names.. I think what it comes down to is this, it isn’t necessarily the people that we love that we are supposed to believe it. It isn’t their goodness or kindness. It isn’t believing that they will never hurt us, or walk away when we need them. What it is, is belief that the Author and Finisher of our faith wrote them into our life story for a perfect and beautiful reason. (Even the horrid people. I know! I know… even them.)

Even more than that, it is the belief, no, it is the knowledge, that they are a child of the Most High God and they are fulfilling a perfect role in His Kingdom. It is getting past how they make you feel (or terrify you… or annoy the daylights out of you… or make you want to punch them in the nose… you get the idea), and instead seeing them as God sees them, and allowing Him to give you His unconditional love for them.

It is not, and never has been about you, but rather God’s perfect plan, which also happens to include loving people that are being rather unlovable. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” If God can love you before you even acknowledged His existence, can you be willing to lay your heart on the line when He asks you to, and to love people that are no longer “safe” to love?

I’m not going to lie, someday it will most likely get you hurt. But if you can take that hurt and pain and turn it over to God, who wants more than anything to see absolutely full of love and joy, then it will be okay, because nothing is for nothing, and every last word of God’s stories are always perfect… you can count on it!

“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.”

~Shakespeare

"People, even more than things, have ot be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone."

~Audrey Hepburn

(By the way, I did enjoy the chocolate.)

Non Nobis Domine!