Ours is an “I love you” family.
We tack on the phrase to our sentences like punctuation.
“I’ve got to run to the store. I love you!”
“I’m heading to bed. Love you.”
“Be careful driving. I love you.”
I didn’t know this wasn’t a universal practice until I was in middle school and realized I had friends whose parents never said I love you. It’s an odd phrase, really, for both how easy and how hard it is to say. You can say it on autopilot before hanging up the phone, closing the door, turning out the light, rolling over. You can whisper it so the other person won’t really hear it, or maybe so they will. You can say it without thinking about it or you can say it after overthinking it to death. You can freeze when you think you should say it, get choked on the letters in your throat. You can say it when you’re happy, sad, angry, or afraid. In both the family I grew up in and the one where I’m the parent, we’ve used ILY on cards for holidays or just because, on post-it notes with reminders to take out the trash, on napkins notes in lunch boxes, on foggy-mirror secret messages. I didn’t know that some people go their whole growing up years without hearing the phrase.
But I think that what’s harder than saying it is believing it.
My four-year-old has developed an odd habit of asking me if I love him. Sometimes more than ten times a day I’ll get the question, “Mom, do you love me?” He asks his dad nearly as much. Over and over I repeat my answer, “Of course I love you. I always love you.” I tell him every morning when he comes downstairs with bedhead and sleepy eyes. I tell him before walking him into his class at preschool, before tucking him in bed at night, when he’s disobeyed and asks me to forgive him. I tell him so much, I wonder if the words have lost their meaning. Whether or not he believes me, I will never, ever stop loving my son.
Today, when I picked him up from preschool, he asked me again. “Mommy, do you love me?” I navigated the van through the parking lot and turned right onto a road flanked by barren cotton fields. I tell him many times a day, every single day. I show him in more ways than that. But I can’t seem to convince this child that I love him more than he will ever comprehend. This must be what I sound like to the Lord, I thought.
Of all the things I struggle to believe about God, it’s the one about His love that trips me up the most. It’s easier to know that He’s good, kind, present, faithful, sovereign, just, holy, constant, merciful. But love? Most of my adult life I have wondered if He merely tolerates me. Sometimes we look at our life circumstances and we don’t feel loved. If God loved me, I’d feel it, right? Or my life would look like one that is brim-full of the transcendent love of the Lord. But sometimes His love doesn’t feel very transcendent to me. If God so loved the world, it feels like His love stopped at the air right above where I’m sitting and hit some kind of barrier.
But the love of the Lord isn’t limited by my perception of its depth. His love persists when I doubt it. He has shown it in a million ways, big and small, that cannot be dismissed or diminished simply because my grasp of it is weak. If I need to know how or why or if God loves me, I can take my question to His Word.
We know from Scripture that God demonstrated His love for us in that while we were still sinners, He sent Christ to die for us (see Rom. 5:8). His love is displayed through sacrifice (John 15:12-13). His love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). His love was shown through His presence (see 1 John 4:9-11). His love is impenetrable, transcendent, and constant (see Rom. 8:31-39). And God’s love has been poured out into our hearts (see Rom. 5:5).
I doubt God’s love for me, but that’s not because there’s any real question about His love. It’s because there’s question about how much I believe Him. When my four-year-old asks me if I love him, I know he knows the answer is yes. But I also know he’s trying to make sure that I still love him, that he can’t lose my love, that there’s a guarantee he’ll always have it. Today, when he asked me in the preschool parking lot, I answered as I always do, “Of course I love you. I always love you.” But he followed up with a new question: “But why do you love me?”
The words rolled out before I even had time to weigh them.
“Because you are mine.”
There was a flash of recognition in those words. They’re not just my words. They’re a parent’s words. They’re loyal words. They’re everlasting words. They are words that are true about us and our Father. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1). In sending Jesus to save us and make us new, we have been grafted into the family of God. He is our Father, and we are His children. We belong to Him. He loves us because He saved us and made us His own children. We are His. More certain than the seal on the irreversible adoption decree that makes my sons my own is God’s constant, never-failing, never-changing love for His children.
We are loved beyond comprehension. And that’s what I try to say to my son when he questions me for the fifteenth time in a day, “Do you love me?” The answer for him is the same as the answer about God’s love for His children. More than you’ll ever know.
Because ours is an “I love you” family.
Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
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