Sometimes Love is a Hard Conversation

I have witnessed incredible courage in my times – bravery on the battlefield of childhood.

Times when adults stood around muttering that “someone should do something” until a child, full of love, tugged the sword out of their stone hearts and became king of love and reason.

An eight-year-old alone in a room of professionals, speaking up to say, “We’re not safe at home. We’re being hurt. Please don’t make us go back there.” Then, taking up her mother’s hand and saying, “Mommy, I’m sorry. I love you, but you’re not protecting us. Maybe these people can.”

The ten-year-old boy who leapt to his feet in a living room crowded with adults (for weeks I’d wondered if he’d been listening) and shouted, “Ha! Mom, I knew that was wrong even though you said it was okay for me to ride in the trunk of the car. It is wrong, isn’t it?”

I nodded my head as I watched his mind make connections like a pinball machine the moment after the quarter drops. “I bet it’s not normal to find a guy sleeping on the floor of your bedroom and your mom doesn’t know who he is. And, I bet it’s not okay for me to put up to five things in my pockets at the store and not pay for them, right? Mom, you’ve got tons of stuff messed up. I think you believe you love me but you’re doing it way wrong and I’m not going to trust you until you start doing it right.”

Suddenly, I realized the kid wasn’t done. He turned to the small group of aunts and uncles sitting in the room. “And you guys – what have you been doing? How come you aren’t saying anything to her? I’m a kid and grown-ups are supposed to watch out for kids. You guys are epic failures watching out for me.”

Or the thirteen-year-old girl who sat across a kitchen table and looked me square in the eye. “Why should I tell you anything about my hopes and dreams? You’re like the fifteenth old lady to sit in this kitchen and act like you know something that might help us. We have problems, but I’m not stupid. Why do you act like it should be normal for me to start spilling my guts to a total stranger just because she says I can trust her? Is that what you teach your kids? Maybe I might need to know something more than your name before I start spilling family secrets because when you all go home at night, I’m still living here and to live here, you have to be smart and careful. Why don’t you ask my dad his hopes and dreams? If you start working on that, we might actually get somewhere, but that’s a lot harder than sittin’ with a thirteen-year-old, isn’t it?”

Sometimes love is a hard conversation.

Don’t tell a kid in your ministry you love them in the name of Jesus unless you’re willing to sit with their parents and talk when you suspect things aren’t all right at home.

Don’t tell a young woman you love her and then suggest she stay quiet when she says that a church leader made her feel uncomfortable with his words or his hands.

Don’t tell a young wife to go home, pray, and be a better wife when she confides about her husband’s unexpected rages, his drinking, his pornography, or his abusive words.

When your friend gossips about the pastor’s wife and belittles her husband and shares details about her neighbor’s business in the guise of a prayer request, don’t just walk away and feel self-righteous that “at least you’re not like her.”

To be like Jesus is to love like a child.

“At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:1-3 ESV

A child sees no conflict between loving someone and telling them the truth.

A child sees no dissonance in loving a person and saying hard things to them.

A child knows that if someone doesn’t stand up to people doing wrong things, they’ll keep doing them.

A child knows how to love someone and still tell them they have to stop hurting other people.

Children learn from the people doing wrong to silence themselves, to hide, to cower, and to embrace helplessness. Jesus calls out the child in us to unlearn these ways for these are the ways of the sinful world.

Jesus demonstrated that sometimes love is a hard conversation.

Children of God, let love incite us to speak truth into our own lives and to choose love even when it would be easier to stay silent. This is the way of light. Sin, pain, and all manner of evil flourish in the darkness.

Our words can be light against which, the darkness will not prevail.

Sometimes love is a hard conversation https://t.co/LtaEdmwILX #hardconversation #Jesus #confrontingabuse

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) July 14, 2018