And over all things, love.

This summer, I forgot that God loved me.

Can't say exactly how it happened. Somewhere in uprooting from my mission home to prepare for a new mission field, in the moment when I was most vulnerable, I found myself lost in a whirlpool of fear. What if I'm an unforgiven sinner? What if I'm not good enough for this life or for heaven? What if, without the constant busyness of service, I have no worth and no purpose? 

And underneath it all, the deepest, cruelest lie that was hiding within the recesses of my heart: 

What if God didn't really love me?

What if?

The haunting emptiness, the darkness that I experienced was like nothing I'd ever known. A loneliness that surpassed all human expression.  I searched unremittingly for answers, for comfort, for reassurance and consolation, but I found none.

And then, the light of the sun shone forth as at the break of dawn: my Jesus had mercy on me. I am weak, I am broken, and because of this, He loves me. He loves me! HE LOVES ME!! I have no need of success, of personal merit -- I claim as my own the merits of His Cross.

The miracle of it all is that Jesus did not allow me to experience such great suffering merely to teach me a lesson for the summer of 2013.  No, He makes all things work together for my good. Memories flood back to me from my childhood, adolescence, and now young adult years -- me being unable to accept His love. Feeling unworthy, unclean. Trying to earn His love through my attempts at perfection. And it was never enough.

And how could it be?? Jesus chose not to shed just one drop of His most Precious Blood, but to spill it ALL, washing over the entirety of the earth, over my sins, over my soul, over all space and all time. It is HIS Blood that saves me, that purifies me, that catches me and draws me up to His Father and my Father in heaven.

I can't say what tomorrow will bring. If this summer has taught me anything, it's that God's ways are inscrutable and not my ways. But I do know that today, and tomorrow, and every day for the rest of eternity, I will be held in His love. And He will never let me go. And that is enough for me.

HE is enough for me.