So this weekend, I heard a lesson that simply blew me away because I’d never heard it presented quite this way before. The header for the week was “Chill. He picked up the tab,” and, in the midst of the talk, I picked up one very simple and basic truth that reminded me of a dream I once had. In this dream, I was talking with a friend of mine who had experienced some childhood trauma. My friend asked me whether I would have prevented these things from happening if I had the power to do so, and without hesitation I said “no.” My friend was, of course, angry at me, and asked why I would want them to suffer; my response was “those experiences made you the strong person that I respect so much today, and without those bad things happening in your life you would probably be a completely different person. Yes, this has made some facets of your personality that can sometimes be confusing to me, but it’s all a part of who you are and I wouldn’t want you to be anybody else.”
The lesson that brought this to mind centered around the fact that God does not love us *in spite* of our faults, but *because* of them; the exact term used was “our God is a God of the broken.” God doesn’t want us to completely cut out those bad parts of ourselves and replace them with something else, but instead He wants us to change those negative aspects of ourselves and use them toward making something positive happen, which is something I’ve been trying to do for myself over the past 3 years (with mixed results, admittedly… but darnit, I’m getting there!) It is in the most broken aspects of ourselves where we are most likely to recognize Him working in our time of need.
The idea that the truest form of love is acceptance of somebody including all of their perceived faults is something that I have always found very powerful. I think this is one of many reasons I’ve become a huge fan of the show Two Broke Girls. The main characters couldn’t be more polar opposites in almost every way, and most of the conflicts between them in the show seem to center around them being frustrated with each others’ faults… and yet, usually, by the end of the episode, they’ve discovered that those “faults” are the reason they find themselves endeared to each other. This, in my mind, is the core of every good friendship and, indeed, every good relationship in general.
