What if Justin died?
It’s not a foreign question to me. I’ve asked it a hundred times. When your brother falls asleep at the wheel and drives his car into a tree and dies suddenly at 20 years old (and you’re only 21 yourself), you live your whole life knowing anyone could die at any moment. My precious husband is no exception.
Last night the question crept into my mind as I rolled over, trying to find a comfortable position in this terribly uncomfortable bed. I listened to his breathing, smelled his familiar breath, and wondered what I’d do if he died.
Maybe I’d move to Alabama or Texas (familiar and full of friends) or buy a house on the Weeki Wachee River, crying in the quick current, watching my tears wash out to sea. Maybe I’d bury Justin here in England in a cemetery with ocean views. Maybe I’d come back every so often and stand on the cliffs and remember.
These are the kinds of plans that usually help me go to sleep. I tidy the wreckage of death with wise choices and chart the chaos of grief with meaningful gestures. Except last night I was having none of it. No amount of beauty or intention could make that loss okay. If Justin Gerhardt died, I decided, I would pull a Wanda and bend the universe to my broken will.
I relate to Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch of the Marvel Universe. Maybe it’s because I lost a brother like she did, a brother everyone assumed was my twin, a brother who helped me become. Maybe it’s because she’s struggled to understand and wield her power; I’ve been there. Maybe it’s because of the way other people look at her—like she’s dangerous: I’ve been there, too. And maybe, certainly, it’s because of the way she’s loved by Vision.
Vision sees Wanda. He sees her weakness and her strength. He sees her hesitancy and her impulsiveness. He sees who she is and who she could be. He sees all of it, dark and light, and he loves her, not because or despite. If you look closely you’ll notice his freely given love in the details: Wanda doesn’t cook for Vision (he can’t eat food). She doesn’t dress in clothes he likes (he’s confused by the sexy dressing robe she wears in episode 1). Vision doesn’t need Wanda to care for him or please him. He doesn’t love her for what she can do for him. He just loves.
I know love like that.
In the TV show it’s Wanda’s love for Vision that brings him to life, but over the course of their relationship. it’s undeniably Vision’s love for Wanda that brings her to power. She lives from his love. It’s her very breath.
And this is why I couldn’t go to sleep. Because I’ve lived my life (26 years of it now) from Justin Gerhardt’s love. So much of what I like most about who I am is fueled by the confidence and freedom I find in being selflessly, unconditionally loved. Being married to a man who needs nothing from me and wants only for me—it’s changed everything.
When you’re loved like Wanda is by Vision, what can’t you do? Who can’t you be?
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“There are two ways to live the Christian life. You can live it either for the heart of Christ or from the heart of Christ. You can live for the smile of God or from it… For your union with Christ or from it.” -Dane C. Ortlund, Gentle & Lowly
All my life I have wanted to be loved by God, and for so much of my life I have made choices in light of that want, straining to be worthy. I’ve disciplined myself and denied myself and prayed and read scripture and memorized scripture and helped the poor and sick and hurting. For too long I did all those things so that maybe God might look my way. I adore Him. If only He might adore me.
Recently I have come to realize that God is like Justin and Vision (or that Justin and Vision are crude reflections of God). It appears God loves me unconditionally, not because or despite; His love is permanent, inflexible, abiding, a force I cannot bend or break. Or earn.
I’m discovering this in scripture at every turn. In Isaiah when God’s forgiveness simply will not run out. In Hosea when God stubbornly loves his unfaithful wife. In Nehemiah when God offers Israel yet another fresh start. In a manger, on the cross, everywhere in the epistles:
neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God
I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ
as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love.
I don’t need to convince God to love me.
Huh.
I didn’t know. Or maybe I did know but didn’t understand.
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Several months ago a friend of mine had a dream about me, a dream for me it seemed. In the dream I was working at Best Buy. I was some kind of corporate higher-up, a hard worker, respected by my fellow employees. My friend was a store manager. We were doing inventory together. He said, “In the dream I looked over at you and you were all fidgety and nervous. I 100% understood that you were exhausted and were over-worked and wanted to go home. You stood there with a clipboard and pen in your hand and were trying to get up the courage to leave. Internally you were struggling with that decision and felt like even though you had put in overtime, the job wasn’t done, so you didn’t really deserve to leave. You felt guilty.” He said he watched me go back and forth again and again, never fully mustering the courage to go. Finally he told me to go home. He said I’d done enough.
And so I left.
The day was sunny. I smiled on my way out the door.
-
I don’t understand love with no strings and no expectations, love without boxes to check, love that asks nothing of you and expects nothing from you. Justin’s loved me well, but even his love wavers a bit when mine wavers toward him. It’s supernatural to love someone who doesn’t love you well. Or at all.
In Isaiah 55 God says,
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways…
As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
We read a verse like that, and we think perhaps of God’s power or God’s wisdom, the way He exists outside the boundaries of time and space. But in context, this verse is about God’s abiding love, His eagerness to take us back when we’ve wandered away. God’s love defies our understanding. His ways aren’t our ways.
His love isn’t small, bound, or bounded like ours. It’s an ocean with no shore and no bottom. (Thanks for that, Johnathan Edwards.)
How do you learn to be loved like that? To receive the weight of an ocean’s worth of love?
I’m still figuring it out. I’m bad at receiving gifts. I’m the girl who can’t stop checking the clipboard, looking for boxes to check, more work to do. But I’m trying. I’m trying to get out the door and enjoy the sunshine of God’s face shining upon me.
In his book Gentle & Lowly, Dane C. Ortlund says we have the choice to live for God’s love or from God’s love. I suppose living from love looks a little like Wanda growing in the soil of Vision’s love, embracing the power Vision sees in her, acting from a place of belonging and assurance instead of acting for it. Love makes Wanda stable. Love makes Wanda strong.
I feel the shift inside me these days. I used to feel weak, like everything depended on me and I wasn’t enough. Lately I feel strong, like I’m channeling something outside of me, something I didn’t earn, something no one can take away.
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I’m not a runner—never have been. Running always seemed like one more discipline to throw on the heap, another hard thing to do to prove my worth and earn someone’s love (I had plenty of those; didn’t need another). When I tried to start running earlier this year I stopped for just that reason—I was not about to fall back into bad habits of proving, striving, straining, and earning.
A few weeks ago I decided to go for a run, because I thought it might be a good way to get the girls exercising during lockdown. They quit four minutes in.
But I didn’t quit. Which surprised me.
This past weekend I woke up two hours before the rest of my family (on a Sunday!) to get in a run before church. The day before I ran two miles.
What am I doing?
I realized during that long run (long for me), running alongside the English Channel, sun on my face, sand and seashells under my sneakers, that I wasn’t running for anything. I didn’t need to lose weight. I wasn’t going to post the picture on Instagram and hope for likes. I wasn’t planning to run a race. No, I was running from something—not “away from” but from an overflow. I kept saying to myself, “Look how strong you are.” It felt good to be strong and to see that strength put to work. I ran from my strength, not for it.
This, I knew, was what it felt like to live from God’s love. To push and stretch and grow and reach—not to be made lovable, but because, by the power of God’s love, I was made able to push and stretch and grow and reach beyond my wildest dreams.
Living from God’s love looks like experiencing God’s love, not earning it. It looks like celebrating God’s love by using it, drinking it, being washed in it.
In some ways living from love looks a lot like living for love—you read the Bible, you pray, you serve people, you’re generous. But living from love feels nothing like living for love. You read the Bible because you get to spend time with God and you feel so safe with Him (not out of obligation). You pray because you can’t help talking to the God who feels like home (not because it’s a box to check). You love others because God loves you and you know how beautiful it is to be loved (you draw from a well He filled). You give generously not to earn God’s protection (give to receive) but rather because you trust God to take of care of you and you like partnering with Him to take care of others.
I asked at the start of this essay, “When you’re loved like Wanda is by Vision, what can’t you do?”
It’s a question I find myself asking as I live from God’s love, empowered, filled, and enlivened. I’ve yet to find an answer.
If God is for us, who can be against us?
In all these things (trouble, hardship, persecution, death…) we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
No bottom. No shore.
-JL
A Book Rec
If you find yourself struggling to accept God’s unconditional, unfailing love, let me recommend the book I mentioned in this week’s essay.
Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers by Dane Ortlund is tender and lovely. I read it every morning for a month and it softened the soil of my heart, helping me further embrace God’s love. If you grew up with a works-heavy Christianity, this is the book you need. Now.
A Little News
Here are a few things going on in Gerhardt world:
Because of UK/US travel restrictions I won’t be speaking live and in person at the Women Walking With God conference this year. Instead I’ll be presenting two mini-movie teaching videos and zooming in on Saturday morning. If you grab an online access ticket you’ll get both my messages and all the messages and performances for the entire two-day conference. Sneak peek: There will be drone footage of the British coast.
Plans are underway for this summer’s workshop tour: The Storied Family! My husband Justin and I will be traveling across the southern US sharing what we know about the power of story to shape, bind, and inspire families. Look for dates, a video, and lots of info in the next month or so. If your church, city, organization or group of friends might want to host the workshop, just reply to this email. We’re looking for no more than five cities.
My daughter looked over at me today, sitting beside her father, and said, “Give me your camera. You two look cute.” Then she took a picture and laughed. “That was such a you thing to do,” she said.
This is the picture. I love it.
According to the new timeline for lifting lockdown measures in the UK, we can officially eat at a restaurant on the patio on April 12th! We can travel between counties on May 17th! Dawn is breaking…
I am ten pages away from finishing the first draft of my newest book.
See you in two weeks!