Love Is Oxygen
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Build: 2017-09-06 08:42:56
To Juli, my wife and best friend.
* * *
You have no idea how much I love and appreciate you. Your love for God, our children, and the world around you encourages me daily.
Contents
Chapter 1: Discover the Wonder
Chapter 2: Love is the Answer
Chapter 3: God is Love
Chapter 4: Prodigal Love
Chapter 5: Love > Fear
Chapter 6: God and the Garbage Dump
Chapter 7: Unshaken
Chapter 8: Fuel for the Fire
Chapter 9: The Greatest of These
Chapter 10: Prepaid Love
Chapter 11: What Love looks Like
Chapter 12: Love is Messy
About the Author
Notes
There I was, sitting in my light tan 1997 Toyota 4Runner, googling “painless ways to commit suicide.” I was broken, empty, full of hatred toward God, and severely depressed. I felt as if I were drowning. I had made my way up to an area known as Skyline, just outside my suburban residence in Southern California, and had parked on the edge of a cliff that overlooked the entire county. To my right was San Diego, and to my left was Los Angeles. Two beautiful cities, and I was between them, overwhelmed by darkness and hopelessness.
I never thought I’d reach this point. I didn’t love myself, and I didn’t love my life or anything about it. Growing up, I’d had an answer for just about everything, but now I couldn’t get my head around what was happening. I didn’t know where to go.
I was standing in front of a spiritual blockade. God’s love seemed blatantly absent in my life, and my heart was like a dried-up well. I felt as though I was alone in the corner while the rest of the world passed by without noticing me. And I was searching for life in all the wrong places: in the party scene, in drugs, and in relationships. Anything that kept me from feeling lonely and worthless. I was yearning for hope, but shallow realities were giving me none of it.
I know I’m not alone. A lot of us have been there before, in that place where everything just seems to fall to pieces.
I was twenty years old and trying to figure out where I fit in the world. I wanted to love God, but I just didn’t know how. The people around me who claimed to have a relationship with God seemed full of joy and hope. Something was different about them. They were excited to go to church on Sundays, liked to read their Bibles, and lifted their hands during worship. I saw what they had and wanted that for myself.
I wanted a relationship with Jesus. But I just didn’t know where to start. I wanted to find forgiveness for my sins. But I just didn’t know what to do. I wanted to be used by God. But I just didn’t know how to ask. Being full of God’s love wasn’t as easy as pastors and Sunday school teachers had made it out to be.
Because of my depression, I believed the lie that nobody in the world, least of all God, would blink an eye if I were gone. And that my brokenness was too big a burden for even God to bear. No amount of Zoloft could keep me from feeling down. No amount of counseling sessions could keep me from thinking I was worthless. And no amount of truth could keep me from believing the lies I repeatedly told myself. I was my own worst enemy, and I seemed to be very good at defeating myself daily. I was ready to say good-bye to everything I had known in life—which was right where Satan wanted me. It was a frightening place to be.
Maybe I was depressed because of the sports injury that almost led to my leg being amputated during my sophomore year of high school and completely destroyed my chances of playing professional soccer. Or maybe it was because I had found out that I had a rare blood disorder resembling leukemia and was only days away from starting chemotherapy. I assume my feelings of worthlessness had more to do with the fact that I had been digging my feet in the sand in an attempt to hold back God from my life. I think I was just scared of fully committing my life to someone. And I couldn’t find a way to keep joy within my life, no matter how hard I tried. I felt like a kite without wind, a river without a current. Everything seemed useless, and I blamed God for what I was feeling. Even though I wouldn’t have called myself a fully devoted follower of Jesus, I still figured God would see my pain and agony and do something about it.
The thing is, he was giving me all the answers I needed. I just wasn’t listening.
Sometimes what we perceive as God being silent is actually our sin and selfishness keeping us from turning an ear to his voice. As the Bible says in Jeremiah 1:5, God had been speaking to me before he had formed me in the womb—his voice echoed with truth before any of us had been formed. But I’d been choosing a life that relied solely on my own strength, desires, and schedule. For us to fully grab hold of God-centered lives, we have to be willing to let go of our self-centered ones.
The Unexpected Rescue
I’d heard the phrase “God is love” plenty of times, but I never really took it to heart. After all, “God is love” seemed to contradict the way in which some Christians had treated me and others. I was never good enough for them, never acted holy enough, and didn’t look the way a supposedly “good Christian” was supposed to look. I was a misfit. But I realize now that God specializes in the utilization of misfits.
It was the darkest time of my life, and I was tired of hearing about the love of God from friends and family members. I didn’t care who God was or what he had done for me. I wanted results—tangible results I could find hope in. And I blamed God for how I felt. Why couldn’t he take this pain away? Why couldn’t he help me? Why couldn’t he have kept me from experiencing the things that led me down this dark road?
Depression has a way of making you blind to everything true. It’s a blockade that keeps you from feeling anything other than complete darkness. It’s something millions of people struggle with, and—sadly—suicide was the tenth leading cause of death in the United States in 2013, and it’s the second leading cause of death for people between the ages of fifteen and thirty-four.[1]
I know not everyone in this world has dealt with depression or anxiety, but I’m 100 percent certain that you’ve felt broken, lonely, and hopeless at one time or another. Love and acceptance were nowhere to be found. You felt as though you weren’t good enough. God seemed absent.
Maybe right now you feel “just okay,” and that is actually the best you’ve felt in a very long time. Your brokenness traps you because of things that happened in your past. Things you wish had never taken place. Maybe they’re regrets or failures.
Or perhaps you’ve yet to let go and find peace amid the violent storm of your worst memories—the ones you’ve tried to lock up in your closet. The ones you don’t like people knowing about. You’re hurting. You’re frustrated. You’re in repetitious, unwavering pain. You ask yourself, Does God even care? I’ve asked that question. I’ve been in that place far too many times.
The beautiful reality is that God does care about you. And he cares about me. God loves us. He feels your pain. He feels my pain. And while he sometimes responds to us in a way that might not be exactly how we anticipate, it doesn’t mean he hasn’t heard our cries. He cares—deeply—about our pain and yearning for hope. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that. Oh, the sorrow I could have avoided! But then again, I believe God works everything out for a reason.
I’m reminded of a passage in the Bible that illustrates so beautifully the uncertainty of our hearts:
We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
1 CORINTHIANS 13:12, MSG
Though we sometimes wonder what is happening in our lives, and though we cannot see clearly what lies ahead or know which direction to take, we have this hope: God promises that he will clear the storms and give us direction. He sees us, and he will bring us out of the haze we find ourselves in.
I’m sure he looked at me patiently, waiting for me to finish my rant, and knew that I didn’t really mean what I was saying. I was just upset, broken, and frustrated beyond belief. He knew I wasn’t yet accepting the love he had for me. I was too blind to see it. But in God’s grace and patience, he allowed me to vent to him. He allowed me to use him as a punching bag. That’s an aspect of the beauty of God—he’s big enough to handle anything I throw at him but wise enough to not give me everything I ask for. A loving Father at his finest.
You might think God is unfair for not giving you all you desire, but in reality it’s quite the opposite. It’s not God’s job to live up to our personal expectations. God’s will is not dependent on our wants. He does what he knows is in our best interest and for his glory. Our job is to trust him through the process, no matter how hard it might be.
That’s easier said than done, I know. But when you learn to truly let go of yourself and instead grab hold of what God has laid out for you, life will begin to make a lot more sense. A sense of purpose and identity will come over you, increasing your yearning to pursue him that much more. God’s love is available to all of us, no matter where we’re from, what we look like, or what we’ve done. God’s love is for anyone who calls upon him for life and hope.
When you put your life in God’s hands, you must trust him fully, even when you don’t understand what he’s doing, why he’s doing it, and for how long. Some things have only one answer: Trust God even when it doesn’t make sense. Trusting God in the midst of your brokenness is a beautifully painful but spiritually deepening experience. Every time you put your trust in God, another scoop of your self-obsession is removed and replaced with the righteousness of God.
You must trust God with your brokenness but realize it’s okay to be mad at him, frustrated, and even downright confused. He can handle it. God doesn’t expect you to understand everything he does. You can question what’s happening. You can wave your fist a little. You don’t have to act as if you have it all together. God can handle it. He wants you to let it all out and be honest with him about what you’re really feeling.
When you give God the room he deserves, your soul finds supernatural refreshment and peace in his presence. After all, we were created for the partnership of God. We were created to do life hand in hand with the one who created us in his image. God’s love is in the business of rescuing those who feel as though they’re suffocating, though he often acts in ways we don’t expect. But it’s still love, and we desperately need it.
The day on the cliff, as I sat in the car my mother and father had lovingly given me a few years earlier, I tried so hard to convince myself that life was worth living, that there was something out there actually worth fighting for. I mean, isn’t that the question we yearn to have answered? To know what on earth we are here for?
My attempts at convincing myself of my value in life continued to fail me. Would people care if I were gone? Would a world without me really be any different? I thought ending it all was easier than admitting my brokenness to others—let alone God. I didn’t want to admit that I felt as though God had abandoned me. After all, I grew up in a Christian home. I grew up in church. I attended youth group every week, memorized Bible verses, and even made sure to pray before I went to bed. I wasn’t supposed to feel like this. I must be broken. I must not be good enough for the wondrous life that God had given to so many others.
Growing up, I believed Christians weren’t supposed to be broken. I’d never heard a pastor tell me he felt faithless, made mistakes, or was going through tough times. I’m not saying those pastors don’t exist; I had just never heard one admit those things. So I was left thinking that if I felt these things, I was a bad Christian and must be doing something wrong. It’s as if you never saw your parents argue when you were a kid, so when you get married and start arguing with your spouse, you think something is wrong with your own marriage (not realizing that your parents actually did argue, just not in front of you).
So what did I do? I bottled up all my brokenness and pretended as though everything was just dandy. I didn’t want anyone to know how I was really feeling. I don’t recommend doing this. When you hold things inside, it’s very similar to putting a pack of Mentos in a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke: You’re eventually going to explode, and your mess is going to affect everyone around you.
All of us can be a little like the airplanes my grandfather and I saw at an aviation show. He and I had enjoyed looking at some of the last century’s most memorable airplanes, which were carefully restored and in pristine condition . . . or so we thought. The engines and interiors told another story. Most of the planes didn’t fly, lacked complete engines, or had interiors straight out of the apocalypse. The planes had looked perfect from afar, but in reality, they were far from perfect.
In our obsession with social media, we love to paint the persona of perfection. We try to present flawless exteriors, desperately hoping our windows are tinted enough so nobody can see what things really look like on the inside. It’s similar to when Jesus called out the Pharisees and scribes for cleaning the outside of the cup and dish but leaving the inside disgusting and vile (see Matthew 23:25). We’re not fooling anybody, and the reality is that we’re doing more harm to ourselves than good.
Prior to that day on the cliff, I constantly found myself trying to act as though I had it all together—as if I had all the answers. I thought the more I had my life together, the more people would respect me. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Living like this meant I wasn’t going to let anyone know I was hurting. No way was I going to show any type of weakness that could possibly make me look bad in front of others.
But while the image I was portraying might have looked flawless and pristine, the interior of my soul was ravaged, hurting, and seeking worth in the approval of others. I wasn’t really who I pretended to be, and it was exhausting trying to keep up appearances.
From the outside looking in, people probably thought I was fine. Nobody would have guessed that I was feeling so much pain at such a young age. I had a loving family, big goals, all the encouragement I could ask for, and a great group of friends. But no one knew that I’d been struggling with this hurt for the last five years of my life. I hid that I was taking medication because I was too embarrassed to admit it. I was in way over my head, and I wasn’t looking to deal with it any longer. I was ready to finally let go and make the pain stop once and for all.
Maybe you’re in that same spot right now. Or maybe you know someone who is. But you need to know this: It’s okay to not have it all together. None of us do. That’s the reason God sent Jesus, a gift of love. It’s okay to not have all the answers. And it’s okay to admit to others that you need help. I don’t have it all together, but the beauty of it is that I do have God in my life. He loves me despite all my shortcomings and failures. He loves you despite all your shortcomings and failures.
There’s freedom in admitting we’re not perfect. We must allow ourselves to be human, make mistakes, and break the bondage that comes from constantly portraying perfection. We’re not perfect and we never will be (on this earth). Don’t feel pressured to be anything other than who God has called you to be. Ignore the opinions of others. Reflect an honest and authentic version of yourself each and every day. Everyone has a highlight reel, but we also all have outtakes.
While crying out to God that day in my car, my face covered in sweat and tears, I felt overwhelmed. And then at the moment I felt at the end of it all, my screams of “I can’t do this anymore, God” were met with a sense of his presence, a presence that words cannot begin to describe. I
thought I might be psyching myself out a bit, overspiritualizing this whole thing, but I quickly realized how real this actually was. I had dropped my pride, broken down the walls, admitted I was powerless on my own, and I was looking to embrace something bigger than myself: God. And when those walls fell, he was there on the other side, waiting, ready to embrace me with his all-encompassing love.
As I continued to try to share my anger with the one who had created me, I noticed my voice slowly lowering in volume, my anger starting to cease, my racing heart beginning to slow down. God finally interrupted my cries and said, “Give me a chance.” It was a voice that had no sound but echoed throughout my veins. It startled me and comforted me at the same time.
“But, God, I don’t want to feel like this anymore!” I shouted, tears streaming down my face.
His response was something I have never forgotten: “Jarrid, I don’t want you to feel like this anymore either.”
That was the moment when God wrecked my life in the most incredible way imaginable. It was as though a semitruck had slammed into the innermost place of my heart. His words were so simple yet so powerful at the same time. In an instant, I felt as though I had discovered the wonder of God’s love for me. This was an encounter like no other. His love became tangible, evident—something I could truly feel within. God yearned for me to embrace his love and share his love, a love filled with hope, a purpose, and a destiny unlike anything else in this world. For the first time in my life, I knew God saw me. He had always seen me. He had always cared. I could breathe again. My soul was filled. My heart took flight.
Many of us have experienced this—that moment when God steps in, speaks up, calls our attention to what he’s doing in our lives. The truth is that we’ve all seen a demonstration of God’s love. Romans 1:20 states,