I have been thinking and thinking about Mary Magdalene lately. Thinking about she and Jesus…about how he loved her. About how her presence made him feel. About the special bond, that although perverted by modern-day scholars, gives us a glimpse into the flesh of Jesus, as her name floats in and out of the Gospels, like a pale colored butterfly, blending with the sky, tempting us not to notice, and yet drawn to her by her restrained and delicate scent.
My teacher tells me the heart is so big. So big that if we allowed it to feel the many kinds of love that it is able to feel, it may explode. And as I’ve been reading about those African men, namely Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela, who led South Africa out of the apartheid, I keep thinking about that kind of love. The kind of love that revolutionizes people’s hearts and ends civil wars. The kind of love that stands in between enemies, risking its life, in order to demonstrate its power, its pervasive kindness and its gravitational pull to Father God’s heart.
As I lay in bed tonight, rubbing my little sister’s back and holding her, I kept thinking about all that we as humans miss out on out of fear. My stream of consciousness flickered about, like a movie, seeing the faces of those people I love in my mind, as I spoke aloud to my sister, trying to make sense of the heartache she was feeling from a failed relationship. And as it so often does, my thoughts took me to the tender, vulnerable parts of my heart where the image of my father still remains. I have tried to push those parts away, have tried to bury them, psycho-analyze them, mend them…and yet there the broken pieces of our relationship rest on the mantle of my mind, like a vase that is waiting to be glued together so that it can function once again. I am familiar with this broken vessel but I am never sure I want to sort through the glass, as the pieces are sharp and I always end up with eyes full of suppressed tears.
It was no different tonight. Holding my sister, I felt one tear slide slowly down my cheek and land in her hair. And then another. I swallowed hard. I didn’t want this moment to become about me. After all, I am twelve years older than my sister. And this was her moment. She needed me.
I spoke one phrase: “I don’t know why I always start to cry whenever I talk about dad…” and then I lost it. The tears came out of a familiar component of my heart and they always feel the same. The release of the emotions and the sorrow over the loss, or perhaps the non-existence, of a relationship united again like summer and winter, assuring me that there is much unresolved. I continued to fight the tears, all the while allowing my baby sister to love on me, to hold me and speak life into me.
And I received. Perhaps one of the powerful elements of love.
And she gave. And she kissed my dreadlock-covered forehead and told me how much she loved me. How much her dad loved me.
We talked about the differences in our earthly father’s love toward his girls and I talked about how I fear rejection from him and how even though I try so desperately to keep my dad at a safe distance from my heart, there is always this lingering pain any time I realize how much I still need a daddy.
And I know that Father God is referred to as Abba. But like my husband says, “Sometimes we just need Jesus with skin on.” And on occasion it just seems natural that this flesh-covered spirit would come in the form of my earthly father.
And I do have hope that someday it will…on either side of eternity.
In the meantime, I pray to love well. To be loved well. To understand the danger of loving and embrace it, for it is the power of God in motion. I should not find it ironic that this same sweet sister, while hurting herself, was able to comfort me in an unexpected moment of angst this night. Her pain makes her real. And enables her to love deeply. And I should not think it ironic that she will get a tattoo on her wrist tomorrow, a constant reminder, of this deep love. It will read:
“How He loves.”
And that is really the bottom line. He loves us so deeply, so madly, so dangerously and without boundaries or borders, despite our inward and outward crap.
Oh that I would love how He loves us…
And receive love because
He loves us.
