letting Him love me, today anyway.

"Maybe I should have had an abortion. I don't know."

I'm watching her say this, and all I can think is, "Has this crazy woman finally done lost her mind completely?"

My Mom had been telling me about her marriage to my father. About the affairs, and the verbal abuse, and how, when she told him she was pregnant with me, he told her to have an abortion. She was, apparently, so wrapped up in the story that it didn't occur to her. Comments about the feasibility of a past abortion should probably be had with one's best friend, and certainly NOT with the object of said procedure. I feel generally safer when the validity of my very existence isn't being called into question at the corner table of Pepe's Family Mexican Restaurant.

As with my father's past antics, this kind of thing from my mother used to sting. I'd be lying if I said that this particular one doesn't still get to me. It was as though, in that moment, she looked at us. She remembered everything about our life together, and what she loved and what she hated, and what we were. And she couldn't decide. "Maybe...I don't know."

I know that she loves me outrageously. She has sacrificed tremendously. But still.

It wasn't until this last year that I understood God's love well enough to see His response to her words. To understand that while my parents didn't plan for me, and the circumstances of my having come into this world were not joyous--He planned for me, and my birth was to Him...pure joy. God was certainly not shaking His head, thinking..."maybe." He wanted me. From the very start. For ever. Unequivocally. And not just after I came, but long long, long before I came. He purposed me.

Some comedian said that childhood is what we spend adulthood getting over. That's funny. Mostly sad. And incredibly true, when our parents are hurt people. When they weren't close enough with Christ to be whole enough in themselves to love us wholly.

Neither of my parents can understand why I keep a picture of them on their wedding day. It's a sweet photo of my father looking tenderly at my mother while she looks down at her ring, in love. They don't understand because they've each had two more weddings since the wedding in that picture. They're both now happily married to third spouses. It probably bothers them that I keep a memento of what I'm sure feels like a painful failure.

But to me--it reminds me that though there was little love by the time I came, there was once love! Though all I knew of them were screaming matches, and hatred, and hurt--there had been something beautiful once. I hadn't come from complete ugliness. Somewhere, there there had been light.

I wonder, sometimes, if a lot of my life has been about making a meaning and a value for myself that I didn't feel. Because, parents beware, no number of piano lessons and figure-skating coaches can replace loving. Loving your kid, and just as importantly loving one another, even in the worst of circumstances.

The truth, though, is that I can't make the same mistake as my parents. I didn't need a Dad who took me to the symphony, and encouraged me to read high-brow literature. I needed one who loved Christ enough to love us before himself. I greatly admire that my Mom never badmouthed him when I was a child, but I also needed her to want me unwaveringly.

I don't need to be the smartest, or the best. I need to love Christ enough to trust Him to heal the hurts that allow me to hurt other people. Because no amount of cheery encouragement, or support can gloss over the sting of a heart not given wholly.

I won't spend my adulthood getting over my childhood. But I will spend a lot of my faith journey learning to let Him love me. Maybe that's sad. It's also beautiful. At least I'm that far. My journeys in the church tell me that there are lifelong Christians who've not yet made it here.

Do you let Him love you?