On Father's Day: Getting to Love

You are the most free when you live in your design.

Two years ago, I wrote this post.

Two years ago, I was learning the difference between having to love and choosing to love my own father. I was learning to forgive.

Today, I sit here on Father's Day thinking about how I get to love my dad.

When God created us in His image, He gave us the ability to choose. That's why there were trees in the Garden of Eden from which we were instructed not to eat--not because he wanted to taunt us, but because without another option, we would all just be robots who love God because we have to.

God wanted real, genuine relationship with His creation. We know this because He didn't only create sea, land, sky, and animals...he also created humans. And humans are distinctly different from these other parts of the world. We have consciences, we have souls, and we have choice. The rest of creation doesn't choose whether or not it worships God--it just does. A mountain's very existence honors God. A crashing wave has no option but to crash and it is doing exactly what it was created to do. A bird who flies south in the winter doesn't think about whether or not it should; it just goes and by doing so, it's living in God's perfect design.

With humans, it's different. We can make the choice to step outside of God's design for us. It's called sin. "Stepping outside of God's design" can be as mundane as eating too many oreos (not taking care of our body) or as complex as taking someone else's life into our own hands. It can be standing still when we hear God tell us to move, or ignoring opportunities that he puts in front of us. It's not always something big, huge, terrible, or awful...but we step outside of God's design every single day. Or at least I do.

The most incredible thing, though, is that He comes back for us! When we say "nah, God, I'm going to do it my way this time," He sighs, lets go of our hand, and gives us the freedom we've asked for. But he never, ever turns his eyes away from us. Because he knows that the "freedom" we're seeking is actually not freedom at all, because it's sin. So he watches us, and when we start to fall because our way isn't working out like we'd hoped, He comes running to meet us in that place of failure, brokenness, and despair.

When he gets there, he doesn't say "I told you so," or "You're so stupid," or "You never learn..." He just hugs us and says, "I love you."

But this is the relationship God wants with his children. He wants us to have the choice to choose him so that when we DO choose him, it's a real, honest, genuine relationship filled with love and joy and freedom.

"You are the most free when you live in God's design."

This quote was from a speaker at my church's women's conference a couple of years ago. And it has stuck with me ever since. The speaker described a mobile phone trying to be used as something else--maybe as a toaster oven or a flower vase. If it's used as something other than what it's been designed for, it won't work correctly. It won't thrive. It will probably break. And it will definitely seem useless to whomever is trying to use it. But when it's used for the right purpose, in its original created form, it has the chance to work perfectly. And not only that, but it has the chance to work better, to improve. How many different iPhones have there been now? 7? 8? They're continually perfecting and improving the model, but they couldn't make it better if they were trying to make the iPhone function as a refrigerator.

In the same way, God knows that his creation will function best when it lives the way He created it to live. That goes for the mountains, for the waves, for the birds, and for the humans. So when we make the conscious decision to give up on our sin nature and give into our God nature, we open ourselves up to endless possibility--because we were created in God's nature!

We weren't created to sin. We were created to choose. And when we choose God, we are living into our purpose, the purpose for which we were created--to love and to glorify the Creator.

I've learned that God desires the same thing for our relationships with each other. He doesn't want us to love each other out of obligation or responsibility. He wants us to choose to love each other, because we understand what love means and what it does.

And out of that choice will develop an even deeper and meaningful relationship. Eventually, you'll find yourself recognizing what a privilege it is to love this person. Your language will shift from having to love to choosing to love to getting to love.

This has been my journey with my father. As I detailed in my Father's Day post two years ago, I always loved my dad because I had to--because that's what little girls do. When I learned that he had deeply hurt my mom and our family, I had to start making a conscious choice to love him--which also meant forgiving him.

Today, I get to love him.

It hasn't been easy. Rest assured, it has been a journey. There was a time when I didn't think I wanted my dad walking me down the aisle or dancing with me at my wedding. There were days when I would reflect on our relationship and think that all of it had been a lie. And there still are moments when I feel hurt or anger or sadness about things that my dad did or didn't do.

But despite those times, those days, and those moments, I have watched my dad become a new man over the last two years. In the face of humiliation and hurt, my dad humbled himself before God and his wife and asked for forgiveness. My mom, following in the example of her heavenly Father, has met my dad with love, grace, and forgiveness in a way that seems completely unfathomable and certainly inhuman.

It's because of that very grace that my dad received from the Lord and from my mom that he has been able to experience true freedom. He has been able to understand who he is, not who the world said he was. He has been able to learn how to love and also how to receive love. He has been able to be the husband and the father that he never could be before, because he was always trying to live in his own design instead of living in God's design.

God designed my dad for great things. He designed him for leadership, for humor, for love. He designed him to be a husband to my mom and to be a father to my three brothers and me. He designed him to build our family up, to protect us, to strengthen us with truth, and to empower us with prayer. He designed him to be the head of our household, to love his wife, to be respected as a husband, and to be honored as a father.

For 26 years, he made choices to live entirely outside of that design. And in doing so, he found deception, addiction, pain, hurt, frustration, confusion, anger, and very nearly destruction. There were moments when he felt free. But that feeling of freedom never lasted long, so he had to seek out the next thing that made him feel that way. Until the cycle eventually stopped and he was forced to come face-to-face with the reality that for most of his life, he lived for himself.

See, the problem with living to make yourself happy is that God designed us for SO MUCH MORE. John Piper says it like this: "God's love for you in such a way that makes him your supreme treasure, is a greater love for you than if he made YOU your supreme treasure. Why? Because self, no matter how glorious, and it will be glorious, self, no matter how glorious, can never satisfy a heart made from God."

Friends, you are the most free when you live in your design.

I have a father who understands this now and is living in this truth. He is transformed. He is a completely different person, different husband, and different father. The transformation has been painful, it has been challenging, and it is still ongoing. But he is committed to loving Christ first and his wife second--and then watching the rest of his life function the way it was meant to function. His live has become fuller and richer because he is finally, finally living in the way that God designed him to live.

And THAT is the daddy that I get to love.

I have never been a prouder daughter than watching the way my father now loves my mom. When I see him adore her and take care of her, I know that that is a man who is choosing to step into the calling that God has placed on his life.

The best thing about God's grace is that it somehow makes things turn out better despite our failures. When I think about the way that I can love my dad now, it cannot even compare to the way I might have loved him without this experience. It's because of his failures and because of God's grace in his failures that I get to love him the way I do now.

Man. If that isn't freedom, I don't know what is.

You are the most free when you live in your design.