All God's Children say "I Love You"

My son is the embodiment of joy.  His laugh explodes like a million blue birds flying up from the rain forest into the sun. He just turned two and my heart is wrapped around his.  My daughter is three and she is somehow a woman and a child and a sage wrapped in a tiny, porcelain body. She and I will argue and laugh and drink tea for the rest of my life, and it is beautiful and terrifying how all of those moments with her feel wrapped in the present.

As I dropped my sweet girl of at her class this morning, I said "Bye honey, I love you." She looked over her shoulder and smiling, said "I love you too!" That brief second seemed to freeze and last just a little longer than usual. She looked like such a big girl.  I felt sincerely loved by her and proud of her and so aware of how precious every word that we speak to each other is.

Carrying my son on my hip as I walked away, I wanted to be sure he didn't feel left out so I wiggled my nose into his cheek and said "I love you too, buddy." He pulled his head back with a huge dimpled smile, and burrowed his blonde little head into the soft space between my clavicle and shoulder. His silent snuggle could not have shouted "I LOVE YOU TOO" any louder with all the words in the world.

My eyes started to moisten as happy tears were held at bay, such an ordinary concrete sidewalk beneath my feet on the most ordinary of days.

I felt so loved.  I felt so much in love.  

For a moment I realized how special each of God's children are to him.  How he sees our maturity and brokenness and goodness and heart and soul.  It's not a ladder or a race.  As much as I cherish the growing depth of my relationship with my oldest daughter, I don't love her any more or less than my silly son who doesn't say much other than "mama" and "choo choo".  I don't love her any more or less than when she was a newborn in my arms.  I just love.  And they just love me back.  

So push on to spiritual maturity, and seek new depth of understanding.  Only understand that reading your Bible or learning greek may enable you to have a new kind of relationship with God- but it will never make him love you more.  Nothing can make him love you more or less.  His love is infinite, unconditional and inseparable from our very being.  

Moments like these make me pause and breathe deeply, in wonder of the infinite God who would bind up sacred secrets such as these in a mother's heart.

Romans 8:31-39

31 What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? 32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? 33 Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. 34 Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.

35 Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? 36 (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) 37 No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.