I’ve been pondering crushed ladybugs lately. Odd, I know. And not my normal fodder for my thought life. Nonetheless, I’ve been seeing images in my mind’s eye of a tiny little hand holding a gross gob of bug guts that had moments earlier been a ladybug. My then three-year-old son had thrust his hand into my face to show me.
“Wook, Mommy! It’s my wadybug!”
“Ew! What happened to it?” I asked as I hurriedly searched my purse for baby wipes and hand sanitizer.
“I cwushed it,” he said.
“Logan, why did you crush the ladybug?” I asked him, scanning my memory banks for any information that would indicate that early stages of psychosis included crushing bugs. One look into those big, brown puppy-dog eyes, though, allayed any hint of fear. They were full of emotion- a mixture of concern, sadness, and resolution.
“I had to, Mommy,” he said. “My wadybug twied to fwy away.”
This memory surfaced recently as I was contemplating the relationships in my own life. One in particular had my stomach in knots. Actually, it wasn’t as much the relationship that had me concerned as much as it was what I perceived as potential pain and loss. I feared for my friend, or so I thought, and I was determined to do what I could to save her.
For many years, I’ve described myself as passionate about relationships, specifically those heart-level friendships wherein you get to know the very essence of the other person and allow yourself to be known in like manner. I’d experienced the benefit of it for myself, to be sure, and when you experience something that inspires growth and healing, you want everyone to get what you got. One of the things I realized as I read Scripture was that friendship is sometimes messy; it’s not always roses and sunshine. Sometimes there’s tension. Disagreements arise; no one’s perfect, so we all mess up from time to time; and, especially if you’re a woman, hormones can wreak all kinds of havoc! But I saw that God expected true friends to weather these storms and, when necessary, to wound as only a friend can when the goal is healing, for wounds of a friend are better than kisses from an enemy.
I was contemplating all of this the other day when I was considering my thoughts, feelings, and actions concerning my friend. I somewhat self-righteously determined that it would be a lot easier if I had remained oblivious to the less fun aspects of friendship, for because of it, my lot in life was now to experience martyrdom (not my conscious thought at the time, but the attitude was certainly present). However, it was okay, because this is sometimes what loving your friend looks like. Hadn’t I learned that years ago? Yet still I didn’t enjoy feeling like my friends were angry with me, and I couldn’t begin to count the times I thought and re-thought and second-guessed whether the things I had done and said, while done and said with a sincere belief that I was walking in truth and doing what I had prayerfully determined to be best, were somehow wrong. The stomach knots simply grew tighter.
Suddenly, I had a moment of revelation. Many times the Holy Spirit reveals things to me gradually and over time, but this was no less than a “light bulb” moment in which I saw something quite vividly and instantaneously. Loving your friends! Loving your friends… Loving… There came a subtle albeit very powerful shift in my perspective and in my understanding. When love is the motivator for what you do and say, it changes everything. For one thing, love covers a multitude of sins; so even if and when we miss a beat in our efforts to spur our friends on, it’s really okay because the underlying motive is love. But it occurred to me that I wasn’t really loving my friend. I was somewhat treating her like Logan’s ladybug. I was afraid of losing her; I didn’t want her to fly away, so I felt the need to close my hand over her more tightly. If love isn’t self-seeking, and love does what’s in the very best interest of another regardless of the cost to self, while I truly love my friend as unconditionally as a person can love, what I was demonstrating was the antithesis of love. I was more concerned about how a perceived loss would affect me than I was with what my friend truly needed.
I was struck by the irony of what I’ve been doing. I took an experience and a revelation- that God created us for relationship and heart-level connection with our brothers and sisters in Christ- and essentially turned it into a law. I took note of everything the Bible teaches about relating to one another as co-heirs of Christ, and I made every effort to “be good” in this area. I turned loving people into a means of maintaining right standing with God. That sounds so utterly ridiculous, but as one who has struggled with legalism and perfectionism for the vast majority of her life, that’s an area in which I don’t always see the forest for the trees, so to speak.
While this revelation wasn’t what I would call exactly fun, it was, on another hand, incredible. I’m always amazed by how gently the Holy Spirit corrects and leads. He wasn’t at all harsh, nor was he disappointed in me. In fact, because God is love, then it’s his very nature to want to show me areas in which I’m not walking in the freedom Christ brought me. It’s his desire to free me to completely love so I can be free to be loved completely.
So to my friends: My motives have been sincere, but sometimes I’ve been sincerely wrong. And that’s okay; I tend to forget that I, too, have the freedom to learn from my mistakes and my misunderstandings and that I’m just as deserving of having grace and mercy shown me as those to whom I endeavor to show the same. God is so good, and his love so unfailing. He’s showing me that in much fuller measure; just when I think I’ve grasped what unconditional love is, he causes me to zoom out and see a bigger picture of it. I pray this for each of you- and not because of how it might benefit me. J I pray this because I know how dear to God’s heart you are, and how dear you are to mine as well, and as much as I desire for you to know more fully the passion of God for you, he desires it all the more.
