When it isn't mutual

Maybe you're the meal maker--the one who can whip up a chicken-rice casserole in the time it takes to say "new baby!" And the brownies, you'd never forget the brownies. Who knows how many of your old pans and containers (though they were carefully labeled) got lost in the kitchens of those once in need? Shoved in the back of the cabinet, forgotten, unreturned.

And when it's your turn to recover from surgery or have a baby or spend a week with your eight year old in the hospital, it's hard not to wish that someone else knew that chicken-rice casserole recipe. And that someone else cared enough to bring it.

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Maybe you're the young wife, the one hanging on to a love he says was likely never there. You want to believe you have enough love for the two of you, that he'll change his mind, that what felt at first like a fairytale wasn't just your imagination, that what feels now like a nightmare will pass, that he'd be there to say he loves you too if only you could find a way to wake up.

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Maybe you're the middle child, the average-at-everything, never-enough-to-be-noticed daughter who wishes just once you could vault yourself toward the exceptional side of the spectrum--in something, in anything. Just enough to be admired, just enough to be seen. So many times you sat on the sidelines to cheer a brilliant goal or in the audience to applaud a beautiful solo, or off to the side at a party, wishing you had just a drop of the social confidence those gorgeous gregarious girls seemed to be swimming in.

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You give and you love and you admire, and really, is it too much to ask to be on the receiving end every once in a while? Of a casserole dish, a kiss, a compliment?

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Could it be that this desire to be loved, to be thought of, to be seen, that it's all by design? His design? And while we frantically hunt in every other realm but His to find it, to meet that need, He waits with arms wide, loving us long before we even acknowledge Him, let alone love Him back. With Jesus, it isn't mutual. He's been all in since the beginning, long before we noticed. And when we see the lengths He'd go--the lengths He's gone--surely we can believe it's for real when he tells us his love is enough for the two of us.

Linking up today with Emily at Imperfect Prose.