The other day I thought about that game we sometimes play with our best friends, our spouses, our siblings. “Would you still love me if…?” Would you still love me if I had feathers for eye brows? Would you still love me if I had ears for eyes and eyes for ears? Would you still love me if I walked like this? And then we turn our feet at unnatural angles and bounce about in the most embarrassing way we can imagine. They’ll roll their eyes and we laugh it off, but it struck me that what we’re really asking is just - Do you love me now? Not with elbows for knees, or if I had flamingo legs, but right here with all my actual flaws and imperfections. Do you take it all in and still desire to draw me close? When I’m angry or obviously insecure, when I’m over-the-top over-joyed about something and bubbling over with too much energy. Do you still love me then? When I snap with impatience, or when I laugh at the wrong time, or when I say the wrong thing, do you still love me in that moment? 

It’s natural that we should ask that. It’s a fundamental human desire to be loved so fully that every corner of who we are is covered in that grace. We struggle to love ourselves in such a way, so we doubt. How could anyone else possibly accomplish it?

I’ve been fortunate to have many relationships in my lifetime, most of them dear friendships, where I never had reason to doubt that I was loved like that. In good times, in dark times, their steadfastness proved it - that yes, I am loved in all my brokenness, imperfections and annoying habits. Yet I go on asking the question: “would you still love me if…?” Would you still love me if I messed up? If I forgot your birthday, or hurt you, or acted selfishly in our relationship? Could you find a way to love me even then?

Each time we ask that question it feels like a drop in the well. Maybe if we ask enough, we can fill it and move on in assurance of how deeply loved we are. It’s a trap we fall into, thinking we can satisfy that doubt. We’re really just positioning ourselves to drown. The questions  pile up over our heads and the walls of the well become slick with their inability to satisfy us. Our insecurities sink into our bones, making us heavy, pulling us to the bottom, choking out reassuring responses. Even in the most secure relationships I’ve had, I found I could go on asking that question forever. 

Yet there is one who can provide a satisfactory answer to that bottomless question. We see the proof of it hanging bloody on a tree. We feel the truth of it in His hands and side, split open and raw. We hear the reality of it in the silence of an empty tomb. We taste it in broken bread and smell it in cups of wine.

Will you still love me if I sin again? Will you still love me when I sin the same way again?

When I whittle it down for myself, the deepest version of that question is at the same time simple and vast. "Will you still love me when I am unloveable?" Our deepest fear, laid naked in our hands. Yet over and over, He will come close to answer, "Not only will I always love you, I have always loved all of you." The Creator of the Universe, holy and unblemished, leans down to not only save us, but sing over us. To not only sustain us, but to Father us. He looks at every last shred of who we are and says, “She is mine. He is mine. I want all of who they are."

From before the foundation of the earth, He not only knew us, but loved us. Who else could answer that deepest question in us, but the one who gave up everything to get us back?

As many times as we need to ask it, the answer will not change. Perhaps one day, we will experience it in such a way we will actually dare to believe it. This is important. It sets us free. When we no longer walk in the fear of proving our doubts correct, we are able to offer that unconditional love to others. We are ministers of God’s compassion, agents of grace, meant to mirror His character in our reflective image-bearing. It’s so much easier to do that when we understand that we are not only loved, but delighted in. When insecurity no longer asks us to constantly prove ourselves, we can finally see each other. Over time, the focus moves from "Do you still love me?" to "How can I love you?"

And then we get to take part in something eternal. We get to offer that safe landing pad we've been given to answer that inquiry.

Yes, you are loved.

Nearly a year in the making, here is the last installment of my healing series. And my last point is this - sometimes...often times... the Lord uses people to heal people.

I remember well the night a deep wound was reversed for me. I was on the phone with a good friend and we were having a conflict. Several years ago, a guy I was dating accused me of dishonesty while he was breaking up with me because I had not brought a problem up earlier. He was operating out of his own wounded space, but those words cut me. To know my intention to be patient, kind, and long-suffering had been misconstrued as a mask, a sign of artificiality deeply hurt me. I felt that label burn into me like a brand, but that was years ago and I had buried it so deep I didn't know I still bore that scar. Until this moment, on the phone with this friend.

We were talking through our conflict. He was being gracious, assuming my best intentions, not my worst. And as we were talking, I asked a vulnerable question. Did he think I was being fake by not addressing the problem earlier? Had I hurt or upset him in that?  And he responded, kindly and gently, "No, no, I think you were trying to show me grace." I didn't know the question was so tender until I heard his answer, but I felt that old wound burst to the surface and bloom into healing.  It was a beautiful moment where I saw the Lord lean down to remind me that while people can be the source of our hurts, they can also miraculously be the conduit for our healing as well.

Years ago in my counselor's office, we talked about attachments styles. There are 4 types of attachments, 3 of which are unhealthy and the last of which is a Secure attachment style. There's a lot of clinical language and concepts behind that, but the Cliff Notes version is that vast majority of people have developed an unhealthy attachment style,  and it affects all their relationships. Yet despite all that brokenness, anyone can learn how to develop a secure attachment style. And the way to do that? To have a secure attachment with someone. That  someone can be a flesh-and-bone person in your life or it can even be the Lord. In my own life I can pin-point a specific friend that was one of my first secure attachments. It wasn't always that way, my own insecurities played in, especially when I was in low places, but looking at it now, I can see how the Lord used her to heal things  deep in me surrounding friendship and my own insecurities, and she did all of that by just being herself, being a steadfast friend, and operating in the fullness of how the Lord made her. I owe quite a bit to the ways the Lord used that.

Another way we can be an agent of healing is allowing our wounds to minister to someone else. Empathy and compassion are rarely birthed without a past suffering. When we find someone enduring a valley we have already walked through, is it not loving to grab their hand and say "I'll stick with you, I know the way"? We can't pull them out of the valley, but we can offer the comfort of knowing it's been surmounted before, as well as the comforting presence of companionship in the darkness. We may be tempted to hide our wounds -- after all, it is deeply vulnerable to reveal our scars. But is this not what Jesus did?  In response to Thomas's doubt, Jesus offered his wounded hands, invited Thomas to place his hand in Jesus' open side. In this act of grace, we see Thomas healed of doubt. How kind and human is our Divine King?

I almost left this piece out. It can be all too easy to look to people as the source of our healing,  security, or safety, and I don't want to arbitrate that mistake. However, I think we can also err the other way when we run from allowing the Lord to use us or others out of a fear of relying on people. We were made for community, and part of the mystery of that is that the very Spirit in them is the same one that reanimates life after death. It is not people on their own, but the Christ in them that is the source of that healing, but it is not for nothing that we are called the Hands and Feet. One of the ways the Gospel is displayed is through healing. What a joy that we get to partner with God in the work He does to make people whole again.

Carl Jung coined the term "wounded healer" to describe the idea that the wounds that we endured allow us to offer empathy, care, and space for others as a means of facilitating healing.  As a secular psychologist, he didn't know he was tapping into a divine truth, but he was. This truth would encourage the priest Henri Nouwen to write a whole book based on that idea, and he summed it up best when he said "Jesus is God’s wounded healer: through his wounds we are healed."  When we allow our wounds to be exposed to allow healing to come to others, we imitate Jesus and operate as a co-heir and co laborer in bringing the Kingdom to fruition here on earth.

Healing is a life-long path and there are many detours on the way. One day when the Lamb returns, we will experience full and complete healing. In the meantime, we can be sure that the Lord does desires our healing and is working for it in us. It takes the time it takes. It happens little by little. It happens in community. And it happens in letting Jesus into our tenderest spaces to place His wounds over ours. Hallelujah.

This series has hardly been comprehensive, but I hope it has offered a little candle to light the way forward if you find yourself in the darkness. Let this be your reminder to be kind to yourself. Be kind to others. And remember, you do not walk alone.