Day 147 Relaxing into Love

When you get to know Jesus, you become aware of your place in God's love. And, when you are secure in love, you are blessed with the gift of relaxing into it: you discover yourself inside of God's love and no longer have to "hold it together" to get that love.

You know that as kids, your behavior at home was worse than it was elsewhere. At home, you and Daniel are secure in being loved, so you are free to act up precisely because you feel safe, secure, loved. (I am SO privileged. ;) "Relaxing into love" is a sign of security. 

As our edges are softened and our center is secure in God's love, we relax our grip on the well-intended, compulsive, and often false ways we have been trying to "hold it together." Some of us (like me) probably should have relaxed into love a long time ago.  Here are the "Top Ten" ways to be secure in God's love for you.

10.   The deceptive and destructive strategies we use to gain favor for ourselves are no longer necessary when we realize that we are favored and have been forgiven from the beginning.

9.     The shame of being human is transformed into dancing when we realize with St. Irenaeus that "the glory of God is humanity fully alive."

8.     The way we construct our identity in rivalry with others mercifully crumbles when we realize that God is not in rivalry with anyone or anything, not even death.

7.     The myth that we are first and foremost beings of thought ("I think, therefore I am") is graciously undermined when we discover that we are formed through desire, and that our deepest desires for knowing God are good.

6.     The superstitious and transactional way of seeing God ("If I do X, then God will do Y for me") and reading Scripture through faulty lenses (as if the Bible provides us with rules for winning God's favor and stories of people who did or did not play by them) is undone. We learn to see all of life through the eyes of Jesus, who is our Rabbi/Teacher.

5.     The moralistic and violent way we teach our faith and the timid way we preach Good News disintegrates when we realize that God desires mercy, not sacrifice.

4.     Our way of being the Church, doing mission, and even worshiping God is rendered useless when we realize that God is already with all people everywhere, drawing forth life.

3.     Our fear and exclusion of the stranger becomes a warm embrace when discover that Jesus is revealed as the stranger among us.

2.   The internal violence we do to ourselves--the judgment, accusation, and dehumanizing denial of our own desires--mercifully "relaxes into love" in the face of the One who loves us not as we should be, but as we actually are.

1.    Our fear of death and all the ways we are ruled by it is dismantled. We realize that God has removed its sting and transformed death into yet one more gateway to life; in Christ, death opens more doors than it closes.

So dear daughter, relax. You are loved. 

Mom