Chapter One: YOU ARE LOVED
During the time of my parent’s separation, I often went for walks. Along many streets in my neighborhood, and sometimes along streets of neighborhoods far away, I walked many miles. At first I would observe houses, yards, and the occasional person who happened to be outside. Simple brick houses were among the abodes I admired. I also liked houses with a large porch, which was rare in my neighborhood. Many yards were a deep lush green. On most walks, surroundings would eventually go unnoticed for a period of time as I was thinking.
Once when in constant thought about family problems, I was walking through a neighborhood by an elementary school. Approaching a small house on a corner lot, I began to consider that if only someone would give me such a house to live in, then I would be happy. Physically away from my family which was in disarray, I could live my own life. I could earn enough money to buy a car, I could get a girlfriend, and then life would surely get better. Happiness would be mine.
There were three flaws with my fantasy of a prosperous physical break away from my family. First of all, no one was offering a free house to me. Secondly, there still would have been an attachment in my heart to my parents, in spite of all of the hurts.
In fact there comes a time when a child becomes an adult and moves away from her or his parents. Reaching adulthood should bring the stage of parental independence. Parents can give support or advice to adult children like they would any friend, but “parenting” adult children is improper. An adult is an adult. Though the nature of your relationship with your parents should be different in your adulthood, hopefully there can still be friendship. Yet whether or not that is an aspect of the parent-child relationship, there likely will still be a bond in your heart.
Thirdly, even if I was in the position at that time to sign a lease on an apartment and financially support myself, and even if I had entered a relationship with a woman as a girlfriend, happiness would not have been the sure result. True happiness, as opposed to a temporary state of being happy, does not result from circumstances; rather it is a permanent way of being. Having good circumstances really helps support happiness! Yet true joy exists even in rough circumstances for the person who has true love in his or her heart.
So how do you get true happiness? I proclaim that you get it by having love. In fact the Bible reveals that all people need true love, not only for joy, but for everlasting life. Where is love to be found? Is the family the source of true love? What if a person has been so hurt that he or she wonders if his or her heart should ever be opened again to anyone?
Personally, around the time of my parent’s separation, both of them told me that they loved me, and some specific acts expressed that love. But other actions by my parents conveyed the opposite. Loving words accompanied by wrong and hurtful actions brought about confusion and frustration. Both of my parents lost my trust.
Scripture, also known as the Bible, shows that neither humans nor the institution of the family is the source of pure absolute love. Yet even if you are experiencing hurt or desperation within troublesome family relations, perfect love can be received. Rather than depending on family members for pure love, and rather than thinking you can produce love yourself, you must receive true love from the ultimate source.
What is the ultimate source of love? Scripture reveals that God is the ultimate source of love! Perfect love comes from a Person, and that Person is God. God is love. That is what Scripture states, in 1 John 4:16.
In order to receive God’s love, you need to be in a relationship with God. God knows everything about you, and God loves you. To receive His love, you must desire to know God and to receive His love. God has made available the possibility to know Him in a loving relationship, one that will lead to complete unity. The way to be in a loving relationship with God is to believe in Jesus. How can Jesus make a loving relationship possible? In order to be in a true love relationship with God, a person must be holy, which is being pure and good. Why? Because God, who is Holy, will not be in the intimate full communion required for a true love relationship unless there is holiness. True love involves holiness. People fall short of holiness, as it states in Romans 3:23, yet a person can be forgiven of wrongdoings and enabled to become holy. Jesus offers forgiveness and His Spirit, thus a person who receives Jesus will begin a loving relationship with God.
In order for you to determine for yourself if this is true, you need to learn about who Jesus is. God has made this possible. The beloved minister, author, and scholar from London, England, John Stott, once wrote, “Being both finite and fallen, we cannot reach [God.] We could never know [God] (unless he should take the initiative to make himself known)…” (Stott 36). He has. In the Bible, verses one and two of the first chapter of the book of Hebrews inform us that God spoke to people in history through prophets, and then for all times God spoke through Jesus, who was God incarnate, which means God in the flesh. These revelations of God are recorded for us in Scripture, the 66 books of the “Bible.”
This book will illuminate some of God’s revelations written in Scripture. God’s revelations reveal His love for people, including the opportunity for people to have forgiveness. Ultimately His revelations reveal Himself: a loving Father, a Son who is a Savior, and a Holy Spirit. God’s revelations lead to the astonishing truth of Christianity that God offers true love to people, indeed God offers Himself, and it all starts with Jesus.
Love was not my main focus in my teenage years. Being intensely goal oriented, my main goal was to obtain Eagle Scout, and I diligently worked to accomplish that goal. But ironically, after obtaining Eagle Scout the fall of my junior year of high school, there was some disappointment since my life did not seem to be different even though I had achieved such a grand accomplishment. And in high school, another factor came in, which involved intense sexual urges. But I did not date, and to be frank, I never even went to prom. And as high school continued, ironically I felt less prepared to be in a romantic relationship.
After much pondering my high school issues all these years later, I am able to articulate some reasons why I was started struggling, which included some minor depression my junior year. Some of it had to do with the fact I was simply on the wrong academic track. Yet the bottom line is amidst Scouting and school goals, sexual urges, and everything else going on in my life, deep down in my heart, what I was looking for was love.
And my deep down desire for love continued in my college years, yet there was even less of a focus on love as I was overwhelmed with studies, activities, and then a job as a Resident Advisor. Yet as a person who was striving for my own goals, and doing my own thing, praise be to God, He kept patiently reaching out to me. My deep down desire for love, and my belief in the existence of God, which I gained at a point in my youth, remained. Giving simply a one sentence synopsis, the result was that I gave my heart to Jesus on April 15, 1990.
To open up to Jesus, you do not need to know all of the answers. A relationship with Jesus is the beginning of much learning. I learn more from God every day. If I am on earth fifty years from now, I will still be learning. Seeking answers is a blessed pursuit, yet both your mind and your heart must be involved when it comes to learning about God. And though you need faith in Jesus to receive God's love, such faith should not be arbitrary. My faith in Jesus is rooted in God’s revelations in Scripture.
Even if you already have the love of Jesus in your heart, you still have to deal with the hurts from the divorce of your parents. Healing comes from learning from the teachings of Jesus. For starters, divorce is discussed by Jesus in Scripture because of His love for people. Marriage was affirmed by Jesus to be a union between a husband and wife until physical death, as is recorded in Matthew 19: 4-9. When that union is broken, it means that there was wrongdoing at some point by at least one spouse or both. Jesus did give a provision allowing divorce in certain circumstances (Matthew 5:32), which includes abuse and adultery, which are certain manifestations of anger and lust. One of your parents may have made an appropriate decision by divorcing his or her spouse. But even if a parent appropriately sought a divorce, there is no doubt that at least one parent engaged in wrongdoing, and all family members were hurt by that action if divorce was the consequence.
Each divorce situation is different. Even if I had some details of your family situation, the complexities of relationships and the plethora of facts could easily prevent me from fully understanding what you had gone through and are going through at this time. Concerning me, I give a brief sketch of my family situation. My parents separated after twenty-one years of marriage, and I was hurt. They ended up being separated for over five years, and their separation was terrible for me in all five of those years.
Since I was in college at the time of their separation, I did have the advantage of being physically out of the situation for much of the time. I diverted my attention to studies and a part time job. But as the separation continued, problems in my family only escalated. Going home from college was miserable, and I was often forced to stay at the house of some friends for various periods of time. Then after college, pursuing my own plans and dreams seemed tangled in with my ever crumbling family, because of the fact I stated earlier concerning my ‘breakaway’ fantasy, which was that I still had a bond of love in my heart with my parents even though they both, to much different degrees, hurt me.
Divorce between my parents did finally take place. Such closure was welcomed by me, yet the divorce brought no improvement in family relationships for me. I can clearly articulate now that what I have gone through has been awful. And the tragic fact remains that the two people in this world who are my mom and dad are divorced.
I do not write this as someone who handled his parent’s divorce in an outstanding manner. I write this book as a result of what God has done in my heart. Having received love from God, there has been healing, and He has even brought good for me out of my situation of having immense family difficulties. There are some problems that remain to this day in my relationships with my parents, and because of this, I still need help. God continues to guide and support me. And concerning you, the title of this chapter contains “you” because God does love you unconditionally. The next chapter shows how God offers love to you.
Scripture Love Blog
