The Process of Living Loved

BY: PEYTON JADE GOTTSCHALK

Normally, I approach these topics by revealing how I have overcome something that once hindered me. I am transparent, but only in showing where I have come from, more so than, where I am at currently.

But, when I finally got myself to sit down and think on what it means to “live loved” I was stumped. I tried to think of an instance where I fully stepped into who I am, believing in God’s will for my life and who HE has called me to be. 

The issue is I am bad at receiving. When it comes to being drenched in the love of Christ, I am like the driest desert you can think of amidst the first rainfall it’s ever experienced. I can feel the love of the Lord, I can even see it… I can feel it pouring out over the surface of my life but I just can’t absorb it. 

Of course, there are moments and seasons of my life where He breaks through, where the build up becomes so much weight on the surface of my heart, it nearly collapses into it. There are days where I become so overwhelmed by all God has been trying to reveal to me, where I finally allow myself to let His goodness and love in. There are hours where He reaches the center of who I am. Where I weep and my Father weeps with me. Where we rejoice and cry out and dance around the living room because life is just that good. 

My life is made up of moments of living loved and weeks of suppressing that exact idea. I let myself believe my opinion of me is greater than His. I trick myself into thinking my small daily mistakes disqualify me. I somehow get myself to believe I have the power to ruin the will of God… I make Him smaller than myself when, in fact, He is larger than anything/anyone I can grasp. 

HE is powerful and gracious and miraculous and gentle and tender and fatherly. 

HE is all-knowing and all-seeking and omnipresent.

His love is an overflowing sea. His love is big enough to have saved me when I was 14-years-old. His love is vast enough to reach my grandparents, my friends, my colleagues, and my brothers and sisters in Him who I may never meet. His love is greater than my past, present or future. His love will save my family line for all generations to come.

“Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations.” Deuteronomy 10:15

So, while I may not be able to receive the good news of how great my Heavenly Father is on a daily basis, I know it all to be true. I know who He is, I just need to better understand who I am in His eyes—because He wants me to live loved. He wants me to walk in the freedom that came when Jesus died for me. 

“The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his suffering in order that we may also share in his glory… Creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.”  Romans 8: 16-17, 21

Peyton is a freelance journalist who strides through every day with a little coffee and a lot of Jesus. If she’s not scribbling away in a journal at a corner café she is probably watercolor painting, baking pastries or exploring new hobbies.