love....actually

For some reason today I can't get out of my head the line (if you can call something written on a cue card a line) from Love Actually -- "To me you are perfect." That has always been my favorite part of an otherwise mediocre chick flick (I know....can you believe it? I'm a girl who isn't really that into Love Actually), but I came to the startling realization today that that is exactly how God feels about me. Now by no means am I perfect, but that is the amazing part -- God sees me in the light of His awesome Son's sacrifice and that makes me perfect in His eyes. This realization literally brought me to tears. I mean I know, and have known for most of my life, that God loves me but the fact is, He loves me exactly how I want to be loved. He sees me exactly the way I have been searching for so long for someone to see me. I've heard over and over again the "church talk" of Christ being the bridegroom and us being the bride, but to actually feel that?? To feel the Creator of the Universe looking at you with tears in His eyes and saying "To me you are perfect"? Nothing could be better.

family

So....this is my family-- something I never expected, a community of believers truly living life together. I'm going to be honest....I wasn't comfortable with community at first. It was something I had always asked God for and I had experienced it in the past, but nothing like this. Being 100% real and honest with so many other people completely scared me. Coming from a year when all I had learned by the way I had been treated by others was mistrust and suspicion, opening up again was especially hard for me. And there are times when I am still uncomfortable with community, when I just want to run away and hide, times when I hate the idea of being intimately connected with other human beings. Yet I see God using even our shortcomings, our drama, our brokenness to shape us into who HE wants us to be.....and that is a beautiful thing. I have learned things I never would have if these people were just my "friends" and I have shared things that I vowed never to talk about with this family of mine.
One of my favorite passages of scripture about community is Acts 2:42-47: "They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."
I love that community involves a choice, a devotion, to one another. It's not convenient, and it certainly isn't easy, but it is absolutely worth the decision, the sacrifice, the devotion. And while none of us are the same, we DO have everything in common because we choose to. We choose to share the hard stuff, to be honest, to let each other in....even when it opens us up for hurt, for a bruised ego, for the truth that can be so hard to swallow. Because we know and trust that in our brokenness, in our humility, in our vulnerability....THAT is where we find God.