Things I Love about Life

I love the way the sun filters through the window of our little home. I love vacuuming on Saturdays and watching the dog hunt something mysterious beneath the ground. I love flipping the new page of my day calendar and watching the rain fight to be snow.

I love little smiles and big uncontrollable laughs. I love listening to an imaginative game I might have played once. I love being surrounded with bright colors and well-worn dolls twice loved a decade later.

I love laughing with my husband and watching his face crinkle up. I love that it’s just the two of us for now. I love grocery shopping and making plans to budget better. I love listening to the same Christian music over and over again to keep my mind on truth. I love that my husband doesn’t mind the replays at all.

I love deep conversations with a good friend that don’t end until 12 am. I love squeezing a lot of people into our tiny home and maneuvering between the sink and the table. I love that they know which mugs I have in the cupboard, and I love that I get to make a full pot of coffee for the people in my life.

I love bookmarks made by a friend, and the kindest words written alongside them. I love how the blue hammock sways in the breeze, but I’d rather be in it…if those clouds would just scurry away. I love the first day after a horrible migraine. I love the sense of spring, but the cold that snaps me back to the holidays. I love wet shiny pavement, and the promise of summer-grown blackberries.

I love discovering new jobs that I enjoy, and living another day of routine. I love that routine makes me see things more…like how the air feels against my skin, the way the branches sway ever so slightly, the sound of the birds singing…how the house looks while it waits for us to fill it up and make it a home.

I love that God restores, and where I once cried hard, I can come back a week later grace-covered and ready to surrender again. I love that I can kneel without bitterness and realize life lived, and know deep forgiveness, and sit in abundance.

I love that God will fulfill His purpose for me and the only certainty I have of this purpose is that it will be a road that leads me nearer to Him…and is stitched into the great expanse of His glory. I love that some days joy is almost tangible. I don’t write about it enough. I laugh far more than I cry. I smile with the steady hope of God in my heart. I love that earth-bound pain can produce singing, not sinking. I love that God is the Reason it can.

How can I not rejoice? This is life beyond myself. This is knowing God beyond my perceptions. This is seeing the pain of others brought into focus by my own. It’s real-life, big living.

And the best of all is that God’s steadfast love is better than life.

Better.

When my world comes crashing down, and I can’t imagine counting any of the beautiful God-given things that make it up, I still have no reason to despair. I fall worn out into steadfast Love…and find it better than all of life.

God will not remove His love from me when all else feels removed. God will not be unfaithful when faithless I fall into His love again. God will find delight in me as I live loved by Him.

God says, I love you with an everlasting love. A love that will make me uncomfortable for the good of pulling me to God, a love that will sit steadfast with me, a love that will find me in the lonely corner and in the deepest night, a love that will not leave me or forsake me, a love that is better than life, a love that makes life worth living, a love I can’t explain, a love that is not determined by seasons of life, a love that stays…

Maybe it’s not life that I love, but a Love that makes life full of living.

So why be bitter? Why be afraid? Discontented, discouraged, or lost in the chaos? God has given me Himself and His steadfast love is better than life.

I don’t need anything else, and when I cling to God…I find I don’t want anything else either. God has already given me the desires of my heart. God has given me Himself.