"Today You love me more than anyone has ever loved me"

Last night I was listening to Aaron Strumpel as I drove home after spending some time with friends. His album is wrecking me, in the best way possible. I am shaken by his lyrics, "Today You love me more than anyone has ever loved me." It was something I've heard other ways, many times. But something about it just floored me. I feel like God uses my night drives in peculiar ways. Yesterday I was mulling over different ways that God loves us. It felt like looking through a keyhole, having this incredibly narrow perspective, but catching a glimpse of something that changes the world.

I realized that I have been dreaming of my kids since I was a kid. Making mental lists of their names, pouring energy and delight into the mere notion that they could exist. Last night I thought of looking into my rearview mirror and seeing the face of my child in the backseat, smiling and cooing, happy just to be alive, to be with me. My eyes welled up with the dream that my body could create another living person, one that could love, grow, and know this Jesus that loves furiously. It is a brutal reality that we bring children into the world knowing full well that they will cause us great pain but also inexplicable joy. I felt a unique fear form. I wondered how I could raise them without ruling but with the kind of love that protects and serves. The kind of love that draws them back when they're scared. How much longer has our God looked forward to the day of our birth. How perfectly has He orchestrated the fulfillment of our needs, the desires He concocted to place within the depth of our souls.

The more I think of my children, the more I want to know the Father. My Father. His love is the only perfect love. Edifying, endless, and true.

Jesus, make me the kind of broken that can serve... the kind that sees Your kingdom come on this earth...