What I KNOW – You Can Fall In Love With God

I’m back.

As you recall, I had decided to take the month of July off and just be. I took a break from doing and just focused on being. To say it was worth it is an understatement. It was so worth it that I took the month of August off too! But duty has called and I’m back in the Firstfruits driver’s seat along with my team, looking forward to our fifteenth season.

I did sit down a couple of times in the last few weeks to update you on what has been going on but had a hard time putting my thoughts in writing. I’m still trying to process all that happened in the land of just being.

First, let me tell you about the more easily understood happenings of the last couple months of being.

I stopped trying to keep my monstrous mane looking presentable and let the humidity take my hair hostage. I also developed sensitivity to my eye make-up so I stopped using it. It felt good and very freeing not to have to think so much about my physical appearance. I came face to face (literally) with the aging me and invited her to stay this time.

The bird in the picture above reminded me of me. It came out of the bath all puffed up and looking so disheveled. However, it didn’t seem to care what it looked like. It didn’t shake itself back into some semblance of order. It just relaxed in its natural state. A great lesson I learned from just being.

I spent way more time in the garden or just reading outside during my down time. I tried not to plan too far ahead. I lived in the moment. I traveled to California and Elkhart Lake. I golfed. I spent a week with my sister who came in from out of town, and I fell in love.

Yes, you read that right. This is the not-so-easily-understood part of my journey of being. I fell in love with something or someone. I haven’t quite figured it out exactly but I think it’s God.  

I have come to realize that there is a difference between loving someone and being “in love” with someone. I love my dad but I am in love with my husband. Being in love includes an intimacy that loving doesn’t. I have acknowledged that I love God for a very long time. I show that love by wanting to do good, not wanting to disappoint, showing respect, and making my faith a priority.  But now, I think I have fallen in love, because there is a different feeling, a more real and personal aspect to my relationship with God. He’s not my dad anymore, it goes deeper than that.

I imagine this is how Jesus’s friend, Mary, felt when she needed to sit at his feet when he came to visit rather than busy herself with chores. She really wanted to just sit at his feet. She was in love.

Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch woman whose family is credited with saving over 800 Jews during the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands wrote a book entitled The Hiding Place. In it she talked of how she set a place at the table for Jesus regularly and talked to him as if he were right there. I think she was in love.

There is a grace of intimacy that is available in our relationship with God. It is what I found when I just let myself be. This intimacy is a gift waiting for us to unwrap.

Do you want to unwrap that gift of intimacy with God? Are you ready to go deeper in your relationship with God? Do you want to fall in love?

Then come and just be, with me, at Firstfruits.  Next week we begin our fifteenth season of providing women a place to grow in their faith and maybe even fall in love. Won’t you join us?

Joan