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Loving Those Porcupine People

Defending porcupine portrait

It’s easy to love people who love me.

I feel so good inside when I’m with those people.  Elated and strong; I’m on top of the world when I find someone who returns my love with more love.

And then there is everyone else.

The not-so-nice, not-so-friendly, not-so-happy, porcupine people who are just very difficult to love.

These are the ones who make us look and feel so bad.  These are the ones who trip us up and make us want to quit loving because trying to get close to them is so ridiculously painful.   I think that was the point Jesus made in the Gospels when he said anybody can love someone who loves you back. (Luke 6:32)

“Get over yourself, Waldie, when you only love those who love you because it takes a whole lot more grit, grief, and guts to love the one who doesn’t love you back.”

Those are His hard words when I tell Him loving is too hard and I simply can’t do it anymore.

“Can’t or won’t?” 

I was hoping I was pretty much over myself, too.  But I keep bumping into this wall.  Jesus and I keep having the same conversation about who is allowed into my circle of love and who I want to keep out.

The business of  loving can be hard.  When I chose to walk the path of ministry, it hit me squarely between the eyes.  When I chose to walk the path of adoption, it hit me squarely in the nose, and it hurt like crazy.

I truly thought I knew and understood love before both.  I was wrong.   So wrong I needed Jesus to even make it possible.

Ministering to hurting people and living with children with attachment issues are very similar.  Both require helping and caring for people in pain who have a tendency to throw pain back.  Both have opened my eyes to this choice to love—or not to love.  I used to believe that love would be easy because everyone I had loved had been so dreadfully easy to love.

Now I know that sometimes—most times—truly loving people with a lay-yourself-down, gutsy, no-strings-attached kind of love is just plain hard.   So hard that without God, it probably isn’t possible.

And Jesus knew this well when He looked at me in my own porcupine state and then looked at the cross.  And in my ugly, rebellious state He made a choice that I was worth loving, even when I didn’t love Him back.  And He loved you first when you didn’t love Him back.

I imagine the many thoughts He may have had running through His mind, like those I have daily when I face that ugly, hateful person:

“This is too hard.”  “He/She isn’t worth this pain or trouble.”  “I don’t know why I’m the only One loving anybody here!”

Perhaps those were the thoughts that caused Him so much agony in the garden that night as He grappled over the choice to love even when it’s hard.

I think I’ve now felt a bit of that agony.  I wish I could say I’ve always lifted myself up and dusted myself off with the same words He chose, “Not my will, but your will be done, Father.”

I haven’t always, and if I do say yes, it’s usually said through clenched teeth and clenched fists praying He will just let me off the hook.

He never does.

Because after He told me to love those who don’t love me back, He told me:

“Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked.  You must be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate.” (Luke 6:35B-36)

He brings these people into my life on purpose so I can resemble my Father and that is a hard pill to swallow.

Just so I can look like Him.

I confess that many times I speak like a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal about wanting to be like my Father in heaven.  But when He asks me to put feet to my words and I resist or excuse myself from taking that pill.

Maybe because the harder pill to swallow is remembering that I was once that person who was so very undeserving of love.

Loving when it’s hard, when it’s undeserved— and especially, when it’s unreturned—that’s when I most resemble my Father; for love is always a choice.  No matter the excuses, the reasons, or the thousand and one undeserving flaws a person has, the garden reminds me that I always have a choice.

The garden also reminds me that I can cry out to my Father for His love to be poured out into my calloused and agonized heart (Rom. 5:5) so that I surrender to the “can” rather than surrendering to the “won’t” for God always gives me what I need to face the task of loving…agape loving.

This has been one of the beautiful things that serving in ministry and serving by adoption has taught me.

Every person has value imprinted by the Father.

And every person has a choice to love; for love is not always a wonderful feeling, but it is always my choice.  Even the most unloving person on the planet cannot take away my choice to love them when I love on the basis of that God-given value alone; and perhaps, the greatest freedom to love when it’s hard comes when we finally realize this.

For imagine swallowing the idea of a life without a lay-yourself-down, gutsy, no-strings-attached kind of love; a love that bears no resemblance to the love of that beautiful Savior who walked a lonely hill bearing a cross with blood dripping down His face and blood dripping down His back in a mob of people filled with hate and porcupine quills.

On second thought, we dare not call that life or love at all.

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