"Love So High..."

"Your love is so high,
Your love is so wide,
Your love is so deep,
Your love is so long...."

It's one if those worship songs that gets repeated ad infinitum during a service...you find yourself singing along, thinking that you get the point....then you get distracted...then you find yourself mindlessly moving your lips...and then you realize that you've just checked out, and are basically doing Christian karaoke in a group setting. Not. Cool.
I caught myself doing that today, and God knows how many times I've been guilty of it in the past...Worship is so dear to me; it's my love language with God, so when I blow it, it really resonates. God caught my attention back pretty quickly, though, and the words to this song started to hit home.
When we (or, maybe it's just me) sing this song, where's our head at? Are we actually considering physical distances? People do these little hand motions-really?! (I'm too cool for choreography, LOL!!!) Are we really thinking about what those words encompass?
"Your love is so high"
How high are we willing to go, to test the limits? Are we willing to drop the baggage, and let Him take us to the secret places? Or do we trust Him so little that we'd rather be weighed down?
"Your love is so wide."
We stretch out our arms...because that's as far as we can think. "As far as the East is from the West..." I'm directionally-dysfunctional, but even I know that East never meets up with West. That's the grace of God. It's so endless...we can't comprehend it. I get angry, I hold on to things. I stay mad....I recently recalled an upsetting conversation that happened in November, and was surprised to realize that my anger is still palpable. I'm still mad. My love, evidentally, is not very Jesus-like...it's pretty thin. I need to learn how to have wide love. :)
"Your love is so deep."
This is the phrase that God stopped me on: "So deep". We think of metaphors like "deep like a river," or "deep like a well." He challenged me this morning--"How deep do you think I can go?" We think of depth as being something that's 3-dimensional.....we're wrong. Specifically, I'm wrong. God's love transcends space and time. I'm kind of a closet sci-fi geek, so time-travel things really pique my interest. He caught me on this one, when He asked me if I believed that His love was deep enough to untangle the past. Is it deep enough to undo the hurt? Is it deep enough to restore faith, deep enough to cast Light in the shadowy places? Deep enough to love me when I face the failures, the doubt, the anger? Is His love deep enough to wash it all away and heal the rawness underneath?
Do I trust in that Unfailing Love? Can I let Him in?
I've had to face some real ugliness this year, & it's only just begun. I find myself blocking off the love of God, of wanting it so desperately, but of thinking that I'm too disgusting for Him to give it to me. I hang on to phrases like "He delights in me" because I want Him to so badly, but I know that I'm not good enough for it. I know that this is an attack, and that I've struggled with this for decades. I know that He loves me, but I get in my own way so often-I don't trust that His love is deep enough to dive into. I consign myself to a shallow limitation.
So...in essence, I tell God that He can't handle me.
Wow.
We all limit His love in our own ways. How deep do you see His love? Deep enough to fix you? Or deep enough to take you down to dirt and clay, to create something entirely new?
Finally, "Your love is so long."
To go back to the space-time-sci-fi thingy, we can't consider that this is a measurable distance. If the depth of the Father's love corrects and renews the brokenness of the past, then surely the length of His love protects and saves the future! I can't see what is to come. I have my hopes and my heart's desires, but no knowledge. What I have, is trust. Although I struggle with my present state, and my past mistakes, one thing that I am sound on is believing that He has the future prepared. I get impatient...I want things now. But I believe that I have to trust in His timing more than anything else, and so I will wait. I trust Him. I trust in the length of His love....
The height: the chance to be free and soar
The width: the chance to be fully embraced
The depth: the chance to be renewed
The length: the chance to be secure

Strange, how a simple verse or chorus can blow your mind, when God gets a hold of it...

Restoration...

I should so totally be asleep right now. My soft music is playing, I've had my kiss goodnight, and all is peaceful on the surface at the Cooley household...but here I am.
Fragments and filaments of failed relationships are keeping me up tonight. Memories of things said and unsaid are pestering me, and though I'm praying for restoration, my heart longs for a speedier resolution than what I'm seeing. My failures are driving me crazy.
A lack of communication...a misundrstanding that got ugly...I've prayed over it for 8 months now. Another fail, a total ignoring of/by someone else--2 years, and it's not right. College relationships and wrong impressions...total losses of integrity....compromises that never should have happened...These are the things that piledrive me at night.
My relationship with God is one thing. I ask for forgiveness--He gives me beautiful grace. But the people I've hurt? I don't talk with most of them. I'd love nothing more than to hear them say that they've forgiven me....that everything is okay.
I'd love to hear them say that we are restored. Everyone makes mistakes, yes, but how great would it be, to hear that it's all been cleared up? I hope I never run for office or write a wildly popular book. I have serious fears that people would come out of the woodwork to announce my shortcomings. I can hear it now: "She can't lecture on God's grace!!!! I was there when she took that shot of Jaeger in 1999!!!!" (Disgusting stuff, BTW.) Or, "She can't write a children's book! She was mean to a co-worker in 2011!!!!" (More than once, I'm afraid)... I don't know...these are not only relationships that have gone south, or examples of stupidity; they're also the ammunition that the enemy uses to keep us from doing the plans God has for us. Restoration is amazing, because it's God making something so whole again, that you can never tell that it was ever broken. That's what I want to see...in relationships from my workplaces past & present, in my family, and in those old friendships that one never truly forgets...that's one of the areas I'd like to see God move in this year...
So, if you happen to have an issue with yours truly, please talk to me. Because you might be the reason that I can't sleep tonight.