Loving is Healing

I was reading through something I wrote to a friend recently and realized it was good stuff, so I wanted to put it here (with a few slight edits). For background, a good friend of mine, Laurie Mansdorfer, recently died of cancer. This was written right after I went to her memorial service.

Just got back from Laurie's memorial service; I was really glad I got to go. Wish you guys could have been here too. They're such a sweet family; it was great seeing Jacob running around, Hannah being her beautiful shy self. It's gonna be hard for Mike...but I know God will bring them through, just like He sustained Laurie to the end in faith and love. They'll be in Indiana the next week or two; we're gonna do everything we can (and everything we'd be needed with, of course) to help them along in the coming months.

Going to the service, thinking about Laurie and life and death, made me think we were wrong in the way we were talking the other day. Not that death isn't a release from pain and suffering and sin--that's what makes Laurie's death bearable and not quite so tragic--but the implication that life is merely to be endured. I think that attitude's been dominant in me for quite a while. But the wonderful thing I saw with Laurie, from the stories people told and the lives she impacted, is that even when she was suffering she was still reaching out to others, giving to others, spreading God's love to others. Now I'm sure she wasn't doing that perfectly, but she wasn't letting her suffering ultimately prevent her from fulfilling the purpose God had for her life.

And I guess that's what really hit me tonight. "What is the purpose of my life?" Is it just to get through without screwing too much up? Is it to make lots of money on airships? Is it to sell lots of soap and lip balm and build schools and orphanages in Zambia? Well, maybe on the last couple in a way...

But the ultimate purpose of my life, I realized, is to love. To love God, and to love others as myself. A life full of God's love, pouring out to Him and others, is what we were made for. Anything beyond that is meaningless, ephemeral.

I feel like I've been so focused on myself recently--ironically stemming from my desire to be a more godly person, yet debilitated by the sadness and frustration I feel at failing so utterly in that--that I haven't had hardly anything to give in love to others. The solution to my problems, the solution to my pain, is simple: Love. If I let myself be hungry for God, trusting that He will satisfy me, if I give myself in love to others, care about them in the same way I want others to care about me, then I will in that very act of love be healing myself. In other words, I've felt that what I needed was for others to love me. But that was completely wrong. What I needed was to let myself really love.

Oh Lord, help me to live this way, to trust in you that giving is more blessed than receiving, that when I give of myself I will end up having more of myself to give.