thE hiGh COst OF LOVE by Heidi
Standing in my dining room, having just put all four of my kiddos to bed, I was suddenly faced with a free evening. While I thought about what to do, feelings began to surface from earlier that day… “I sacrificed everything for this?!” I lay on my bed and cried. A new friend had just come over to teach
me how to make a local dish. She speaks fluent English, and is the only friend that initiates calling and visiting me. But instead of enjoying it, I came away wondering “I traded a very privileged, lowstress life for a difficult, high-stress one. FOR THIS? If this is it, then I don’t know how long I will last here.” Sacrifice is trading something you value for something even more valuable. Yet, I am discouraged in my relationships this last year and a half, as I have mostly felt criticism from local friends: “You are doing this wrong.” “Why haven’t you done this?” “Why didn’t you do it this way?” There is deep loneliness in my life. It causes me to question: Do I value Jesus and what I have in him more highly than my personal happiness? God has made us all relational, especially me. I need deep friendships. But am I willing to learn what it means to endure until He brings me this? Lately, the sacrifice has felt heavy. A friend of ours says about living in India, “It’s not one big thing that will make you want to go home, it’s the THOUSAND little things.” And tonight, I am feeling them all. Higher stress level, heat, humidity, ants in the kitchen, maids that can’t clean, deliveries that never come, people that flake out when they say they will do something, constant stares, dressing myself from
head to toe whenever I am out of my home, pigeons taking over my balcony (again!), termites in my furniture, power outages spoiling the food in my fridge, inverters breaking, no deep friendships… Will I let the thousand little things send me home and throw in the towel on my sacrifice? Things haven’t turned out the way I expected. But does that mean that God didn’t expect this? Was my life not laid out before Him? Do I believe that woven into its fabric are His good plans? He knows something I don’t. Maybe I should, but I don’t. He knows that He is enough for me. He knows that if I knew His love, accurately, deeply, I could learn to endure a season of loneliness—maybe even a life of loneliness. Can I continue to give this sacrifice, looking forward to what I do not see? Just like my brothers and sisters in Hebrews, can I live the rest of my life a stranger–clinging to His undying love, hoping that someday it will come in fullness? Honestly, I don’t KNOW this love yet. Only love makes this worth it, otherwise, I have nothing. I have sacrificed it all for nothing. God tells us that to show Him our love, we must choose obedience (John 14, 15). But obedience to suffer? Is this how we love him in return? We share in his sufferings by dying our own slow death to all desires and needs. Day in and day out. We choose to die. We learn to love. To
communicate
love
cost
everything. Why wouldn’t it cost me everything? I am reminded of the passage we talked about with our kids last week, “Put on love” (Colossians 3:14). It is a choice, a practice—every day. And I realize that now I truly understand what the cost is. Now I can accurately count it. But am I willing to pay? I traded in my whole life—sacrificed it all. Yet, I still have to learn to love in radically different ways than I am capable of alone. I need the strength to choose love—over my flesh, my impatience, my anger, my comfort. I must know it—to understand that what I am sacrificing now will be more than worth it in the end. I want to know His love so deeply that everything my life exhales leaves behind the beautiful, costly fragrance of Christ. “Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13b (The Message) Heidi is a wife and mother of 4 who lives abroad in Northern India. When she is not homeschooling, you can find her escaping the routine of home to visit the royal desert palaces in Rajhastan, or walking on the beaches of Goa while sipping sweet fresh lime soda. She enjoys market hopping and capturing the colorful and contrasting world she lives in through her camera lens.
Jesus
Editor’s Note: Heidi recommends the following blog post by Christian artist, Shaun Groves, for further reflection on this topic. http://shaungroves.com/2012/05/downwardmobility/#post-comments
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COmpaSS maGaZIne