Chosen for Love Beyond a Void

A little while back, I was reading from a collection of Blessed Fulton Sheen's works in Life is Worth Living in our library basement, and I came across this quote:

"It is the possibility of a no that gives such charm to  'yes'"

This quote was in relation of God giving us free-will. This free will is in relation to our choice to love Him. When God created mankind, He decided that we would have the option to enter His kingdom by loving Him in return. The choice to love God enters our every action, because if we love God, then each action will be made to serve Him and bring His kingdom to Earth. And when we choose to reject God for a moment in our sins, we step away from the kingdom.

Because each decision we make is a choice to love or not, every person has the opportunity to experience and more deeply understand what it means to be accepted or rejected. We all have the chance to feel what God does when we enter in to a relationship of any sort with someone else.

Unfortunately, our vision of what love looks like has become distorted. With novels and songs and movies that depict a completely dominant character and a completely obedient character filling our lives, the only image of love we have is very one sided. One person says "yes" to loving another person over and over while the other may only say "thank you" once or twice. Yet the submissive character chooses to remain because they do not believe that they are going to ever find "love" again. The song, "She Don't Love You" by Eric Paslay:

"She don't love you, she's just lonely
She don't know another way
To break free from what's been broken"

We believe that if we do not do exactly as the other person wishes, we will be left alone. In a world of constant communication and instant gratification, the concept being alone and silent is terrifying. So we choose to pour our hearts out to people, just so that we can believe that we are being loved in return. Love is not an action anymore, but rather a presence. We choose someone to fill the void.

My Void

I am a very loving person. My parents raised me to treat each person as if I were looking in the face of Christ when I meet them. Sometimes I fail, but my ultimate goal is to love each person as much as I can. Because of this, I found myself running thin and tired year after year. Because I did not know how to receive love in return for my love for others, I started to run out of steam. All I needed were a few heart to heart conversations to fill me up for the semester, and then I would sit and listen and be stepped on with a smile. It did not matter that I was broken. Everyone else was more important than me.

Each time I grew weary, I found a person. It was usually an unexpected companion, either because of their cultural background or their previous role in my life. All they did was listen to my sob story for however long I needed it, and I was hooked. Sometimes that person only maintained that role for a short time, but other times these people took on an unnecessarily large role in my life. They never did anything beyond listen to my problems, yet I chose to make them the most important person in the world. Their problems dominated my mind. Their needs filled my prayer life. Their lives became my favorite form of entertainment.

For some strange reason, I believed that God was teaching me the real meaning of love through these people. I thought that by giving my every waking part of myself to those that seemed to care first, that I was actually receiving true love. After all, not very many people want to listen to other people anymore. Their problems matter more than the person next to them. We ask the homeless for their life stories and then refuse to give them comfort.

Just being there when someone shows up is not love. Not running away is not love. 

This is Love

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends ~John 15:13

God's sacrificial love through Jesus Christ is what true love is. He loves us enough to die for us, yet he does this only so that we may choose to love him again. He chooses to love us and is waiting for us to love him in return. Before we were born, God decided to love us, and He wants us to experience it in our daily lives through the choices of others.

God showed me who truly loved me

My Family

The first place that we have the opportunity to experience God's love is through our families. I am blessed to say that I have been given nothing but the greatest gift on Earth through Team Newton.

My mother chooses daily to support me when I am irrational and emotional beyond belief. My father reads every single one of my lab reports and never lets me give up on my dreams. Mark keeps my faith burning. Joseph loves on me when I need it the most and say it the least. Cordelia sings along to my favorite songs, even though she may hate them. Penelope cheers and hugs me every time I come in to the room.

Most of all, my second youngest sister Evangeline has loved me when I loved her least. I would ignore her and be rude. If she gave something to me, I would simply smile and step away. Like so many of the relationships I had partaken in, she gave and gave and gave, receiving very little in return. However, she always forgave me when I apologized. I have since started to reconcile with this six year old, and she has shown me that when we choose to love someone else, the return is invaluable in worth. She has saved me from myself.

We can all receive selfless love within our families. I know that not all of my Dear Readers have the opportunity to be loved by an immediate family. However, I do know that there is a great family, one that extends beyond time and place and thought:

"As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ. 

For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit. Now the body is not a single part, but many." ~1 Corinthians 12:12-14

God gave us the church so that we may enter in to His family and experience the love of Christ. Certainly we have our families here on Earth, but God does not leave His faithful alone. We are all His sons and daughters, and the Church brings us together. It is my greatest joy to know that I will some day meet all of my siblings in Christ in Heaven.

Friendship

The second place that we have the opportunity of experiencing God's love in is our friendships. I have numerous friends that have made an impact on my life, but I believe that only a chosen few have truly embodied the meaning of the word "friend."

"Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter;
whoever finds one finds a treasure.
Faithful friends are beyond price,
no amount can balance their worth.
Faithful friends are life-saving medicine;
those who fear God will find them.
Those who fear the Lord enjoy stable friendship,
for as they are, so will their neighbors be." ~Sirach 6:14-17

A true friend is someone that loves us for all that we are and all that we are going to be. They strive for a relationship that grows in Christ as well as in love. They save our lives and they bring the love Christ in to our hearts in the process. In all of my life, I can only count a couple people who truly fit this mold. That is how it is meant to be. Not every person is meant to be your best friend, but we are meant to love others with genuine care and respect. When we do this, a true friendship may be built.

I did not notice these amazing friends for a long time. Because I was so obsessed with these big relationships, I ignored the people that loved me daily in simple ways. However, I have started to return to their lives, and they have welcomed me with open arms. When I chose to love them, they returned that love, and the joy that has entered my life from this is immeasurable.

This is how Christ loves us.

How He Loves Us

If you remember the story of the Prodigal Son, you may remember that the Father runs to the son. He does not sit at the top of the hill, waiting for his son to fall at his feet. Instead, the father sprints to his son, the one who once said that his father was dead to him, all because he loves him. God loves us in this way.

As soon as we choose to love him, regardless of the lives we have been living, God runs to us. The world tells us that we have to earn God's love, that we have to give and give and give. The world tells us that we have to be in constant pain from carrying our cross. The world says love is a struggling service.

God says this instead:

"I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world." ~John 16:33 

No matter the lives we are living, God chooses to love us. Even though we may expect a "no" from God for all of our requests, He chooses to make our lives greater. Like the Prodigal Son, the Father dresses us in glory as we come to Him.

God lets us experience this love through true friendships and from our families. He blesses us with people who truly love us, who choose from their own free will to love Him through loving us.

You are loved. Never settle less than for than greatness.

And remember.

You are always someone's first choice.

You are His.

The Sneakiest Sin

There are many sins that fill our lives. However, there is one sin that we don't often think of because it is so prevalent in our world. It creeps up in our hearts and minds and makes us think it isn't there anymore.

This is the sin of bearing false witness, or in simple terms, lying.

Why do we lie?

 ...though the light has come into the world people have preferred darkness to the light because their deeds were evil.
And indeed, everybody who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, to prevent his actions from being shown up; ~John 3:19-20

No one wants their faults and failings to be seen by the world. These may either be our sins, but our falsehoods are typically found in another way: how we represent ourselves. We don't want people to think that we are different or do not belong to their group, so we act differently. Either we post about things in our statuses and tweets we never would say in person, or we speak differently based off of what crowd we are with. If we let ourselves come to the light, then we might be rejected.

This rejection is my greatest fear. After being rejected by so many people and never feeling "popular", I found myself desperately trying to be someone I wasn't. I started to tell stories about myself. I started to make myself sound more sassy, more sarcastic, more intense. I started to create this persona of a woman who took no one seriously and ruled the world, simply because I believed that that type of person was wanted by society. I started to sound like a real jerk, and I was actually proud of it. After all, I was becoming what I thought was the world's definition of perfection.

But I was sad and lonely as a result of these actions and stories. There was no good reason for me to lie about who I was, nor was there any reason to become anyone else.

My mother told me that I needed to stop this way of life. It was making my family miserable and life was not as good with all of these lies. So I went to confession and I started to acknowledge that I was going to strive to live as Jesus asked me to. And when I started to live in this way...something changed

But whoever lives the truth comes to the light,so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God ~John 3:21

What changes in the truth of Christ is how we are perceived. Our actions are not seen as our own but rather God is present in all of them. No longer do we live for ourselves, but rather we become consumed by God's love and shine as His light for the rest of the world.

Here's how I know this change is starting to happen to me....

For a long time, I had a huge crush on my best friend. I finally got around to telling him the whole story, which was probably not the best thing to do in terms of emotional chastity. Still, I felt like he deserved to know everything for how it was, not just how I wanted to present my feelings. I was expecting him to treat me completely differently, and I wasn't sure how either. Disregarding my fears, I told him the entire story with no hidden meanings, no new personas, no discrepancies or lies.

When I asked him what he got out of the story later, we ended up talking about God's love instead of my own. Apparently, the lessons that I had learned from our friendship translated to him as well. Instead of seeing me and my actions, he saw God's will and mercy and love.

When we are completely and totally ourselves, God is able to work through us. He has given each of us a unique position in His kingdom, but when we are not ourselves, we are unable to perform in that place. That is why lies are so hurtful. Not only do they take away from our relationships with other people, but they also distance ourselves from God's will. However, when we live in truth, we are able to live as God wants us to.

Overtime, we find ourselves living not for ourselves, but rather for God. We aren't seen for our Earthly selves anymore. As I am starting to grow in God's love, I have started to see the woman He created. The girl that I thought I was did not exist. The true me is not this earthly woman with a lot of sass. The true Felicity is an image of God. As an image of God, she is happy and sweet and silly and smart. She is not this dark person, nor is she a person that wishes pain on another person. This image of God's joy is what allows her to be loved, not the worldly representation she tries so hard to represent.

The sin of bearing false witness is creepy, and it is common to fall under its spell. However, remember that you are not just this little person on this planet. You are a child of God, designed to serve His people in a way that only you can. And if you are scared of anyone judging you, remember that you are not the one who is seen. God is present in your true self, and that is all you need to be loved by the world around you.

An Open Letter to the Perpetually Heartbroken

Dear Perpetually Heartbroken,

It's late at night and you are listening to sad love songs and watching proposal videos over and over, sobbing in to your Ben and Jerry's. Yet again, you find yourself watching your friends' relationship statuses change from "in a relationship" to "engaged" to "married" while your status could potentially change from "in like" to "in love" to "crushed" for the third time in the past four years. Everyone seems to be able to figure out that whole "love" thing, and yet you are alone again.

Your heart is full of love. You pour and pour and pour, hoping that maybe one seed will blossom in to the flower you have always dreamed of.

But it doesn't grow, no matter how desperately you try.

Every so once in a while, you see a sprout. You get excited and run to show all of your friends in the garden. Finally, you are able to make something work. Finally, you have the foundation you hear about time after time. Finally, you think you will find love.

Then it doesn't grow, no matter how well you tended the plant.

Your friends tell you that it isn't your fault that you are single. They tell you that you are "intimidating" or that "God wants you to wait." No amount of free ice cream cones and sweet notes can make you feel whole again, and most of the time you think it is just a pity party. After all, your friends are either making it in their career or are in serious relationships. They seem to have something figured out.

What did you do wrong? Why can't you make him love you?

Your friends tell you that you're pretty, and that you have either the body everyone wants or that you are super fit. They tell you that your smile is precious and that you have the best hair. But after the thousandth time, you start to wonder if they really mean it. Because if your friends really think you are that beautiful, why can't a man tell you that for once?

What is wrong with your body? Why can't you beautiful like everyone else?

STOP.

What did you do wrong? Nothing.

Why can't you make him love you? That is not for you to decide.

What is wrong with your body? Nothing.

Why can't you be beautiful like everyone else? You are beautiful like everyone else.

Stop telling yourself that it is your fault that you aren't dating someone. Stop blaming yourself for when things don't work out. Stop thinking that there was one difference, one conversation, one pound, one memory, or one choice that led you to your perpetually single status.

Your little "imperfections" are not what defines you. They do not determine your current relationship.

They make your future one that much greater.

Your past is so much less important than you believe it is.

Your little imperfections are the things that make you perfect.

Start telling yourself that it is your choice to live your life. Start accepting the friendships you are blessed to have. Start thinking that every unique aspect, every conversation, every workout, every moment, and every choice is leading you to the life you are meant to live.

Why are you beautiful? Because you are not like anyone else.

Why is your body perfect? Everything.

Why will he love you? Because you chose to love him for all he is.

What did you do right? Everything.

START.

Believe that you are beautiful. Believe that everyone is beautiful too.

Tell your friends that they are pretty. Tell them that they have special little things that no one else has. Let them know that you value them for who they are. Tell them over and over and over again, because no one is alone in the battle against the devil. Let them know that you truly believe they are beautiful, and some one will see that.

Believe in yourself. Believe that you are worth being loved.

Let the heartbreaks come, and let your friends comfort you. Let them take you to Sonic at 2am, simply because they saw your face drop as you were opening the door to your room. Let them give you hugs, and let God speak through them. No man can love you like your friends can. Appreciate them, because they are the ones that make your heart whole, not that guy who kissed you.

Keep tending your garden, even when it seems hopeless.

Watch for the sprouts in the ground, but don't stop watering the rest of the garden when they come. Don't run away from your garden before the flowers have bloomed. Keep the ground fertile so that the flower that was meant to bloom does. Then you can show your friends.

It will grow, even if it takes a lifetime of trying.

That flower you are waiting for is going to bloom, and your heart will keep it watered forever. Don't stop pouring out your love for others. It is what makes you special.

So as you wake up in the morning with tear stained cheeks, pull up your Facebook to see the relationship statuses and the Buzzfeed links to proposal videos, and wonder where your happy ending is, remember that you are so much more than you thought you were. You will figure out the whole "love" thing, and you will be able to share your Ben and Jerry's and watch your wedding video together.

It's going to worth out.

Sincerely,
Perpetually Blessed by Family and Friendships that will last forever

Girls, Squirrels, and Pearls. What more could you need?

On Sunday, April 12th of 2015, I was initiated in to Alpha Gamma Delta. This moment was huge for me, as it has been a long time coming.

Hurting

Many people feel a bit of a slump in their second semester of sophomore year, and I was one of those people. Because I am so highly extroverted, I knew that I could not take on my highly stressful life alone. I started searching for a community that I felt like I could belong to. While I had community on my hall, a church group, and an exceptionally loving family at home, I still felt lonely. I did not really think there were very many people on campus that understood me as a person.

I started to grow closer to a few people within Greek life within my hall. There were two Alpha Gams on my staff, several on my specific floor, and numerous friends of mine that would cut through Patton from time to time. They welcomed me with open arms and made me feel like I belonged with them, even though I had not gone through recruitment or even said anything about becoming Greek. It was the last thing most of my friends would have expected. Still, the gears started turning in my heart, and I found myself looking up figures and finances of Greek life on my own.

The day that I finally told my friends that I wanted to go through recruitment was a big day for me. I remember my heart was beating quickly, but burning with delight as well. It was at my future Sis-Mom's desk shift, and her little (also one of my best friends) was with her. I can't exactly remember who started crying, but we were all so happy.

Sadly, I did not get to go through fall recruitment. I had been too scared to ask my parents, of my standing in other organizations, and being able to handle everything. There were some unavoidable circumstances as well, and I thought that I would be ok. I so wasn't ok.

On Bid Day, I drove off campus and locked myself in my mother's closet and clutched my childhood teddy bear, sobbing because I wanted to be celebrating with all of the other girls.

My friends reassured me that I was just as special to them, regardless of if I wore letters or not. With their love and support, I was able to feel better after about a week. I threw myself in to personal growth in that semester. I dedicated myself to my dance, my science, my current friends, my family, and my faith. Still, I felt like I was not being fully supported by the community that I had on this campus. I love all of my friends deeply, but I did not have one place to go at Belmont.

Hope

Then, on January 25th 2015, I received an email inviting me to Informal Recruitment with Alpha Gamma Delta. I remember breaking down in happy tears and calling my mom to ask her if it would be ok if I went through recruitment. She said, "You didn't in the fall and I thought it was stupid." So I went through recruitment, and I met the greatest women. On the day that I received my bid from my favorite resident, I couldn't think of anything else, not even my huge molecular biology exam the next morning. I was just so happy to be home with my sisters.

The New Member period held a special place in my heart as well. There were only eight of us, so we were able to bond fairly quickly. Some were in my group fitness classes. Some were my residents. Some shared a similar major. Most importantly however, they shared my values and approached life in a similar way. After searching for a group of people that understood my worldview, and therefore me, I finally found them.

Home

So then, when I was finally initiated, I was overjoyed. Sadly, I had to sprint off to a performance after the ceremony, so I could not celebrate with them. Even still, I have a peace of mind and heart that tells me that I found my place, my people, my home, my sisters that God granted to me for when I can't be with Team Newton at home in Franklin.

And how fitting is that our chapter is celebrating Alpha Gam week on the same week as my initiation! I love that I get to see my sisters all week, and I get to celebrate just how wonderful our sisterhood is. Thank you God for helping me find a home on earth in AGD.

Rest

That title is exceptionally misleading for a girl who is a Biochemistry/Molecular Biology major, dancer, freshman RA, active member of Belmont Catholic, and a new member of Alpha Gamma Delta. Nor does it reflect the mentality of a girl who goes to the gym six or seven times a week. However, I am not going to talk about resting in a sleep sense...because really, who gets that anymore?

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your selves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light." ~Matthew 11:28-30

This is a very famous verse for a very good reason. We are all tired. We spend all day fighting for a better life, better body, better paycheck, better position in life, and better everything. We try to be perfect because the world tells that that is what we need to be. Therefore, we are all burden by some degree of extra labor. 

In order to have the lives that we think we need, we try to plan everything. We run around and tell ourselves that we can run the world for ourselves. After all, if we have free will, then we should totally be able to handle anything that comes our way. We can be perfect if we try hard enough. It's the mentality that we are strong enough on our own to do what the world wants that brings us to a breaking point.

My Burden

I tried to control a lot of my life, and I tried to say that I was perfectly fine. God was just a tool to make things easier for me. Certainly He was not in charge of my life! He could not possibly give me a better route to eternal happiness than the toil that I took on on this Earth!

I justified this by saying that my struggles were my cross to carry. After all, we are all given a cross to carry, and we have to keep it going.

"Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." ~Matthew 16: 24

Every day, I struggled with  my insecurities and my mental health and my heartbrokenness on my own because I was too proud to believe that I was misinterpreting what Jesus meant by saying to take up our cross. In fact, sometimes I thought I was becoming a better Christian because I was surviving so many more struggles and succeeding at so many tasks that others would not have been able to in my condition. If I could make it through all of that turmoil, then obviously I was getting closer to understanding the beauty of God in Heaven.

But wait, didn't Jesus say, "My burden is light?" Why did I let this struggle take on my life? Why did I call my mother crying about irrational things, sit in a gazebo to talk for hours, or make my best friend talk to me until the time changed? Surely the burden given to me by Christ is not meant to be this terrible. The real cross brought the Salvation of Mankind and my assumed cross was only brining pain.

I had forgotten what Jesus had said about taking on his burden. "Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart." No, my cross was not all of those trivial things. It was my pride. I needed to admit that I could not handle life on my own.

It's ok to not be ok.

Once I admitted that I was wrong, I started to get some help. I started to talk to people about real things. I saw a doctor. I asked for help in class. I prayed not with formalized and fancy prayers, but rather with my heart. I said

Lord, show me Your will, not my own. 

Clearly I do not understand what I need to be happy

But You do!

Please show me who to love, how to live, and what to do.

Then maybe I can find the life that you had created for me and me alone.

I stopped telling myself that I had it all together, and I told myself that my plan was not the best plan. How could I ever imagine something more fantastic than the life the Creator of the Universe could imagine?

We all try to take control. We all say that we are completely fine and that nothing is going to take over our lives. Confidence is good, but we need to know where our confidence comes from. It comes from the Holy Spirit, dwelling within us, telling us that God loves us and that He has an amazing path for us. By finding confidence in that, we can find a happier life.

Now, many would say, "How can we have free will if God has a plan?"

We have the free will to choose God's plan. We can choose to run to him and throw down our burdens. For some of us, that may be going to church again. For some of us, it may be an apology to someone. For some of us, it may be finally going to see a psychiatrist like I had to. For some of us, it may be a day off with our friends that we haven't talk to in a while or a spontaneous trip home. For some of us, it may be a change in major or a new career. Whatever you have to do, don't be like me and avoid God's amazing plan.

His Plan Worked Out for Me

Since the day I started to see that God's plan was more beautiful than my own, I started to be more real. I took more breaks and talked to people I loved. I admitted my fault, and I stopped worrying about everything and anything. I got help and I found peace in my life from that.

And then God started to reveal blessings left and right. I was accepted to perform research at Notre Dame for the summer, even though I had originally been rejected. More of my friends were around because I was actually able to sit and talk to them. My time at home with my family was not spent studying all day, but rather enjoying my time with them instead.

Life gets better my Dear Friends. I hope that you find strength where you need it and that you get a chance to rest in His ever present love. It certainly is the best place for your soul to be.

Certainly, I am not a perfect person, and I still fail. We all fail. However, if we follow God's plan, life gets a lot better and the pressure is far less.

Good Enough

Happy Easter Dear Friends! I have been trying to get a blog going for a long time, and so my new resolution is to create a blog that shares my thoughts. Most importantly, I want to share the joyous parts of our faith in Jesus Christ every moment that I can. The Title of my blog, "Happy Easter Rose" is reflected through the quote from Saint John Paul the Great.

"Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song."

This past semester has truly taught me how much God love us, and how deep His love for us is no matter how far we have fallen, ran, or lost ourselves in sin. As much as I would love to recount each of these events, I will simply share the revelations that the Lord presented me with so that my Dear Friends might be able to share in the joy that He has shared with me.

You are Good Enough

The devil's favorite past-time is to convince us that we are imperfect, that God could not love someone like us. However, because we are designed to love and be loved by God, the devil distracts our hearts and tells us to focus on what is elsewhere, what is in the world.

As a single woman at a private Christian institution, there is one thing that is constantly prevailing on my newsfeed, and as a result, on my mind: relationships. Friends left and right are getting in to meaningful relationships and attaining that "Ring by Spring" status. Meanwhile, I am sitting in the lobby of my building on Valentine's day, watching my friends return in their pretty dresses and carrying large boxes of chocolates not given to them by their mothers.

I also was not as popular as I wanted to be. There were so many girls posting numerous pictures of their large groups of friends. And there I was, on duty every weekend, because I did not have anything better to do, and I did not want to have to spend another night alone. Clearly something was wrong with me if I did not have people around me all the time.

What is Wrong With Me?

This question bombarded my mind for years. I wondered if it was my body, my sensitivity, my passion for the Catholic faith, my love of science, or anything else. Clearly something had to be wrong with me if I did not have a boyfriend after four years or why people chose to hang out with everyone instead of me.

Did God make a mistake? Did He create a woman who was not worthy of love from a man? I would cry in front of my bathroom mirror, staring at my stomach fat, my medications, and my crucifix, thinking, "Clearly God did not understand how much it hurts to be a person so filled with love but with no one to love."

Finally I found something. I was too proud. People were always being put in their place, and it felt good to be on top. Even if I was different from everyone else, at least I felt good about myself in a group. Instead of admitting my daily failures, I chose to deny them. I could not remember the last time I had entered a Confessional, let alone made an honest apology for any action of my own. It was through the loving reminder of my mother that I needed to be honest and real that brought me to this recognition.

So I went to the Confessional, and God did as what was written in John's first letter:

"If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing" 1 John 1:9

Healed by God's mercy, I started to see the world more clearly. Surely I had made mistakes, and surely I was not a perfect person, but I was not a complete failure. There were things I had done wrong, but there was nothing wrong with me personally. God made me and loves me, regardless of what I have done. All I needed to do to hear that was admit that I had done something wrong. I had done many things wrong.

Just because you have made a mistake does not mean that you are a bad person, let alone are worthless. Just because you had a bad relationship does not mean that you will never love again. Just because you gained a few pounds because you chose to eat pizza instead of go to the gym does not mean you are ugly. There is nothing on Earth that could separate you from God's love.

For I am certain of this: neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nothing already in existence and nothing still to come, nor any power, nor the heights nor the depths, nor any created thing whatever, will be able to come between us and the love of God, known to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.~ Romans 8:38-39

Amen? Amen.

But What if My Sin is Too Great?

I used to be in this pool of people who thought that my biggest sin, was too great for me to ever be lovable again. I used to think that if I kept sinning on top of anything that I had done before that I would fall too far away. Maybe that was what was wrong with me: God did not love certain parts of me. After all, if humanity is in His image and can choose to love parts, then maybe God does not love all of me.

This could not have been more false. Human love is imperfect and judgemental, but God's love is unconditional and eternal. I did not see this until God spoke through my best friend one night, and while the conversation had little to do with God's love for me, what he said really spoke to my broken spiritual heart:

"Felicity, I don't want you to think of a rejection as not being accepted. There is not some part of you I don't like. You're my best friend. I like all of you. So do not think of rejection as me not accepting some part of you. I like all of you."

Sin is a rejection of God's love to some small degree or a very large degree. Yet while we reject Him, Jesus chooses to love us ever still. And even though that one action may be a part that He could chose to ignore, to dislike, to not love, God chooses to love that part of us as well.

For God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but so that through him the world might be saved. John 3:17

Yes, Jesus did not get up on the Cross because He wanted to be able to say, "Yes, you can get in to Heaven, which I opened up again by the way, because you did nothing wrong and therefore are perfect." He chose to get on the Cross and die for hours because he wanted to say, "Yes, you hurt me, but you are perfect and I love you. Come have dinner with us." He wants us to be able to be with Him and to love Him.

Yes our sin is great, and yes it hurts Our Lord, but He loves us ever still. He kept His covenant with His people and sent the Messiah, even though they worshiped a golden calf instead of the God that brought them out of Egypt.

No matter what it is that you think is holding you back from God's love, whether that be your appearance, a mistake you made, a lonely feeling in your gut, or something else that no one else knows, remember that God loves ALL of you. He is waiting for us to return to Him, and His arms are wide open. He will wipe away all of your tears and will dance with you in the gardens. He will tell you that you are his precious child and give you a great big hug.

You are good enough.

You are more.

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