For the Love of It

For many years now, I have thought of myself as being pretty good at loving people.  I think that has come about partly because of my basic nature but also partly because of the tests God has seen fit to send into my life.  We all get tests.  Many we don't enjoy but they force our growth.  My growth came in learning to love that which at outward appearance would seem difficult to love. 

When we were told that we had 2 deaf children and then lost our third child in 10 days time, I didn't want to even live let alone view this test as a vehicle for love and growth.  Looking back on those days is still somewhat painful but only from this point of view can I see what really came about because I was forced to confront something that I otherwise would not have done.  From the point of view of age and experience, I can see the love that Heavenly Father had for me when he gave me that test all in one big chunk instead of 3 smaller ones.  A friend of mine once told me, "You can only hurt so much."  I think Heavenly Father knew that and so gave me that trial all at once in a sense to help me have to "survive" it only once.  I didn't understand it at all until I had Micah and discovered I went through that pain and mourning for something lost all over again in a time when I was better prepared for it. 

I have learned to hold dear those experiences of those days because they were part of making me what I am now.  They brought me to the place where I saw that there was much more to life than the superficial things we cling so tightly to.  They brought me to a place where I learned to love the less than perfect Dale's and Theresa's, Rob's and Tony's, all the less than perfect people that so enriched my life.  My journey in the deaf community taught me to see and love people as they really are, as Heavenly Father sees them.  My time at the Transient Services Office taught me the same.  Some of these people made their own pain in a sense, some of them did not but they are all God's children and my brothers and sisters.  I have never really had any prejudices or pre-conceived ideas about people in general but if I had, they would have been swept away but the love that washed over me while working with all of these, God's children.

Coming here to New Zealand has been another of those experiences.  I have never met so many people that I felt I had known before.  It happens again and again almost everywhere I go here.  Usually the people I meet and "know" are not the well to do types but the simple, tender and sensitive spirits that I find everywhere I turn.  They have multiple problems, racial problems, family problems, problems with abuse in all it's forms, normal everyday frustrating problems.  It has taken me in most cases almost no time at all to learn to love them.  I hate what I see all about them but it isn't hard to love them, my brothers and sisters.  My capacity to love has grown by leaps and bounds.  I have found a whole new family here.  They don't look like me or talk like me.   They don't in some cases even think like me but I love them still.  They frustrate and confuse me.  They baffle and confound me.  They teach me and I am a willing student.  The Spirit helps to fill my cup and often it runs right over.