Ice Cream and Broken Bones

 4/20/16

It’s the week before finals week, some of my best friends are graduating and if I could eat Oreos for every meal this week, I probably would.  It has been one weird week of emotions so far.  I don’t want to write and am honestly forcing myself to sit down and write this because I can’t miss a week.  Here comes my study break brain flush, turn back now.

One thing I’ve really been thinking about is how little I love things.  Like I can say “I love ice cream” or “I love the Packers,” but that’s not true love.  

I was listening to John Mark McMillan’s Live at the Knight album tonight while writing this and in one of the songs, Guns/Napoleon; he pauses to talk about love and living a life of love.  He says,

“Love means sometimes you have to compromise. Sometimes you need to lay down something of yourself for something greater.  It’s not easy, but it’s the best way to live.  Love can break your bones, but broken bones tell stories and broken bones sing songs”

(I could probably write a book on the impact John Mark McMillan’s music has had on my life, but that is beside the point.  That quote is so beautiful and vivid.)

Ice cream hasn’t ever broken any of my bones, maybe it has for you, but I don’t think I’d eat ice cream for a while if it ever hurt me in that kind of way. 

 

How many things do I love enough where I’d let it break me to the bone and still love it more the next day?  Not many that is for sure. 

It’s probably just the anxiety of cleaning my dorm room and my Biology 100 Final next week, but life feels like it’s breaking me.  I definitely don’t love those two things.  How am I supposed to love those?  They’re the worst.

In reality, I don’t love a lot of things because I don’t want to get hurt by them.  I might like something, but once it turns on me I ditch it and go and try to find something else.  I don’t love the way the Lord teaches me to love because I am lazy, apathetic, and scared.  Love is work, work I am not always willing to do.  A loving life is an exhausting life.

Like most things in my life (cleaning my room), I don’t want to do it, but it is important to do it.  If I don’t clean my room, the mess will only get worse.  The other day we went to a local nature preserve and pruned invasive species.  If you don’t cut away the weeds, they will suck the life away from the good plants.  We need to fix problems early on before the problem grows so large that it overwhelms us.

Ok side rant.  How amazing of an analogy are weeds?  They look good, they look natural, but they   We invite weeds into our life so often, but they end up sucking the life out of us until they are removed forcefully and cut out of our lives.  They grow thorns and make it harder for us to get out.  It hurts at first, but life is much better when they are gone.  Definitely not the first person to see this analogy, but it is just so good.  Ok, analogy/rant over.

are so bad for the ground and surrounding plants.

I’ve never broken a bone, but I have been around a lot of people who have.  One thing that has always perplexed me about broken bones is the fact that the bone comes back stronger than it was before it was broken after the healing process. 

This is why a love that can hurt us is important.  Love is a war.  It is a constant battle between what will help me and what will help the person next to me.  Like makes us feel good, but love makes us feel cared about.  If the people around you truly care for you, and you truly care about and love them, you are going to get hurt. 

The best example, just like the best example for everything, is Christ.  We physically and spiritually broke Christ's bones on Good Friday.  Christ died a death that was physically crushing, but even more so spiritually crushing.  Christ was so broken down but loved us enough to endure it.  One thing I always forget when thinking about Christ's love is that he enjoys us.  Christ wants to spend time with us.  He always has time to hang out.  He doesn't flake out at 6:30 for your 7:00 dinner plans.  Christ loves us so much that even though our sins crush him, he wants to spend every single waking moment with us.  

That amazes me about Christ.  Someone could give me a weird look and I won't talk to him for a week, but all the wrong I have done, am doing and will do is known by Christ and he still wants us to hang out.

Getting hurt in love is ok, because if something hurts it shows how important it is to you.  We hurt Christ more than anyone could ever hurt us and He sees us as important and "very good."  

Love should break us down.  Love should be hard. With brokenness comes healing and with healing comes strength.