I have a lot of people ask me pretty often why I’m not on dating apps, ‘putting myself out there’, or looking for a relationship. I guess there are many reasons, but one that has been hitting me harder and harder recently is because I’m not waiting to love anyone. I’m loving the people I’ve been given with my whole heart now.

Years ago, I was at DT, and a friend, Jos, prayed for me that I wouldn’t wait to love; but, that I’d love the people I’d already been given with everything that was in me. The prayer came as a response to me wanting a family of my own. His prayer stuck with me for months and years, and it has become one of my most beloved and important mantras: to love the people I already have with everything that is in me and to hold nothing back.

I’ve had to ask myself the question a number of times, “What if I give my love away and don’t have enough left for my future?” That question is equally juvenile and hilarious, but God has always met it with sincerity and gentleness (as He always does with honest, yet childlike questions). He’s taught me that two things.

1. This love isn’t my own. There is no way I could love anyone, let alone myself. And no chance whatsoever that i could love anyone well. I only love because He loved me first and gave me His love. All my love is an overflow. Which means that all the love I have is dependent upon His character, which is:
2. Endless. He stays the same. Never changes. Never runs out. Never depletes in any of His capacities or character qualities. He is love. And His love is endless and boundless. Eternal and limitless. It can’t ever run out because He can’t. That means that I will never run out of love as long as I stay rooted in Him. I can give all I am away, and I’ll always, somehow, have more and greater love in my future. Not because God’s love changes, but because I will never come to the end of learning more about and growing in capacity for His love to be in and through me.

He gave me this beautiful picture of a mother loving her first child with her every bone and whole soul. However, when the next child came, she didn’t love the next any less because of it. In fact, she loved the first child MORE than before because when she had the second child her capacity for love had grown. I had the revelation that with each new person (or in this case child) we let into our heart, our hearts expand and become more capable of loving than they were before. That wrecks me.

So, in answer to that question. I struggle, sure. But I’ve learned that contentment is based on giving all we are to the now. I believe that’s a skill we’ll be applying for eternity.

My lesson to myself: Stay rooted in the Father’s love (let your roots grow deeper and wider). Love fully. Hold nothing back. Contentment is right there. I believe we’ll be content for life in every season if we learn this.

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“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”
1 Peter 4:8 NIV

“This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
John 15:12 NKJV

“We love Him because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.”
I John 4:19‭-‬21 NKJV

“The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.”
Psalms 23:1 NIV

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
Hebrews 13:8 NIV

“For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:38‭-‬39 NKJV