I recently posted a photo of my wife from when she was a little girl on social media. This photo feels very special to me—my wife as a little 8-year-old girl waving back at the camera while playing in a park near her hometown. This photo isn’t only precious to me because of the cute little girl that would become my wife one day, but because of what I know about that moment and what it meant to her at that time. She was then, as she still is today, extremely shy.
Captured in this split second of time is one of the rare moments in her childhood where she felt fully loved and safe in the company of her grandmother, whom she loved more than anything or anyone in the world. Finding and keeping friends does not come easily to someone so shy. This photo is from the summer before her 4th grade year in school. In two more years, she would become the target of some extremely vicious bullies that would change her world for the rest of her life. Very often a bullied child will stop seeking help from adults and begin to internalize their fear and sadness as a way to protect themselves from more scorn or disappointment. She was no exception.
I know, for me anyway, bullying is a mystery that seems to never go away and follows us into every generation, but that is not what I want to focus on here. I want to go back and focus on that moment when someone feels fully loved. These moments may come before or after hurtful or heartbreaking events, but unfortunately, I feel they may not come often enough for too many of us.
When God asks us to love Him with all our hearts, all our soul, all our minds, and all our strength, and then to treat our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:30-31) we get a clear message as to what complete love looks like. I think it also clearly indicates how God loves us back. The visible effect of what it looks like to be fully loved can never be clearer to us than when we see it looking back at us in the eyes of a child.
When we fully love someone, especially a child, in that moment we help them to feel absolutely complete. When we feel fully loved we get to experience in that moment a sense of fullness, not just that we are feeling loved by another, but a complete sense of who we truly are. Love is not important simply because it makes us feel good, it is important because it reveals in us who we are. It is the final ingredient of our existence that makes us whole.
After posting this photo of my wife I told her how much I absolutely adored it. I told her how magical it was to my eyes. However, I quickly learned that the photo and my reflections on it had a completely different impact on her. The photo made her sad. It brought back to her both the good memories of her grandmother, but also a reminder that her grandmother was no longer here. It reminded her of her own frailty and the abuse she would suffer later in her childhood that would steal from her the trust she had in the world around her for the rest of her life.
I wasn’t completely surprised when she said this because I know her story, but I pleaded with her to understand the nature of my love for the photo, or rather the moment it captured frozen in time. I told her when I look at the photo what I love most is knowing at that very moment she was complete. I told her that all I can think of while I’m staring at that picture is how I desperately want to go back in time and find her in that moment and whisper to her, “All things will be well.” I want to tell that little girl that bad things will happen, but she will always be fully loved and she will prevail. I want her to know on the other side of the darkness ahead is a life that blossoms into miracles. I told her when I look at that photo I see who she really is, because in that moment she was fully whole. In that tiny little body, in that very shy little girl is stored all the power of God, because it was put there by God and love is the key that releases it. That is what I see when I look at that photo.
God loves us completely and when we likewise give our love to others we help to complete God’s work in creation. Love is a superpower available to us all. Use it.
Letters From Nod 