Once upon a time there was a little girl named Karen.  Life was perfect...she grew up, became a teacher, met the man of her dreams and got married, bought a house, started a family, traveled the world, and lived happily ever after...if only things were that simple... 

The reality is...once upon a time there was a little girl named Karen, she was teased as a little girl and struggled as an adolescent, became a teacher and struggled to be everything that she desired to be to her students, met the man of her dreams and then realized that marriage is hard and that life as the wife of someone who travels is lonely and isolating, faced financial challenges, struggled with infertility, was forced to deal with the divorce of her parents after over 30 years of marriage, and felt at times that the brokenness of her life was going to consume her...

The brokenness of the last couple of years have caused me to question love.  I know that real love should be patient and kind.  Real love should not envy and should not boast.  Real love is not proud or rude or easily angered.  Real love does not keep record of wrongs or delight with evil.  Real love rejoices with the truth, and always trusts, always protects, always perseveres.  Real unconditional love never fails.  (1 Corinthians 13)  When the family that I was born into fell apart, I couldn't help but question everything that I had always believed about love.  This led to a series of questions that I didn't want to admit that I was asking to anyone but myself.  If love is supposed to be everything outlined above, then why did my family fall apart?  How is this part of God's design for my life?  How will anything ever be okay again if love can fail?   Can I ever be loved and love unconditionally if love can fail?  Will I ever be the mother and wife that God desires for me to be if love can fail?  Love isn't supposed to fail...

How can the goodness of God co-exist with the hard?  I have recently been obsessed with the story of Katie Davis and her life in Uganda.  On her most recent blog entry she writes..."the hard does not minimize His goodness but allows us to experience His goodness in a whole new way."  I know that God is good and that he will love me with an unconditional love, especially because of what I have experienced in my life.  The thing that I struggle with is loving others with that same love.  I retreat because I have been hurt.  I hide because I am scared.  Every single day I fail to love the way that Christ has loved me.   I make every excuse in the book to stay in a place where I hide away from what I know that I am called to do.  Loving unconditionally doesn't mean that I won't fail from time to time.  It means that I will call out to the One who does love unconditionally to renew me when I fear that I can't keep moving forward. 

 All of us are hurting...broken...fearful.  Each and every day God places people in our life who need love.  Sometimes love is a smile.  Sometimes love is a five-dollar bill for someone who desperately needs it.  Sometimes love is understanding and forgiveness even when one has been hurt or betrayed.  Sometimes love means admitting when we are wrong.  Sometimes love means giving up time on the weekend to serve a meal or fix a fence.  Sometimes love means traveling to another country and serving orphans and widows.  Love means being Jesus to every person that we come into contact with every single day of our lives. My capacity to love has nothing to do with my family or the ever changing conditions in my life.  When we choose to love God won't just heal the person that we are seeking to love...He will reach down into the depths of our soul and heal our hearts as well. 

Katie Davis shares of the town drunk who showed up on her door step with a burn that threatened to take the leg of this man.  She didn't want to love him as time and time again he made it difficult for her to care for the people in her village.  But God told her to love...no matter what...and not only did God heal this man's leg, He healed his heart.  She shares that God, "met us right where we were, right there on the cold hard tile of my sun room, and He took two broken people, so different and yet so much more alike and showed us the scars on His hands and said its ok if we have some too because the scars are always drawing us to Him."  I am scarred...but I know that I can love unconditionally because that is exactly what Jesus did for me.