Loving the crap outta people.

Live beautifully, dream passionately, love completely.

I’ve been thinking about this phrase the last few weeks.
About what it looks like to live beautifully. About what it feels like to dream passionately. About the reality of loving completely.

Loving Jesus with everything. The completeness of everything.
Loving people with everything. Into the completeness of everything.

As I get older, I think I’ve become more comfortable in my own skin and the knowledge that living beautifully still takes place in the shades of grey that exist on this mosaic journey.

Accepting the mosaic journey makes it more simple.

Simply living for Jesus and walking hand-in-hand with Holy Spirit and rising each day to make that choice to love Him fully.

Simple. But yet still a mosaic.

Fragmented pieces becoming whole in each other.

Living beautifully doesn’t avoid mess, it embraces it.

Living beautifully acknowledges that I am at heart a broken wreck in need of a Saviour who loves me into wholeness.

Living beautifully acknowledges the fullness of who God has made me to be me and the continual refining work of His grace. Living beautifully relishes the realities of early mornings and the comfort of oversized sweaters. Living beautifully accepts my perpetually messy hair and my addiction for tea in it’s various forms. Living beautifully lives and enjoys the journey.

To quote another, living beautifully leads me to crave adventure and a life filled with magic in the smallest of things. That’s the smallest.

To open your eyes to the beauty that God placed all around you.

To never lose your wonder of it all.

To never lose your laugher in it all.

The more I walk this journey called life, the more I realise that joy comes in doing the things that feed your soul and not your ego.

Eternal things are more important treasures.

Living beautifully means that I am freed to dream passionately. That even in my times of wild prayers and tear-soaked-eyes and feelings of failure, God’s faithfulness towards me is my constant strength. Constant. His mercy is my one and only constant.

Dreaming passionately means that as I am emptied of myself, there is more room for His mercy and His Kingdom and His eternity. More room for His fruit. More room for His love. Because He is Love.

Remembering that eternal things are more important treasures.

Dreaming passionately means that I am led into loving completely. Loving God with all my heart and my soul and my mind and my strength and my vision and my passion and my purpose.

Loving the crap outta people.

I read that phrase on a poster the other day and I immediately fell in love with it.

Because that’s what love does, right?

Love, in the fullness God gives, loves people relentlessly. And it doesn’t give up. He doesn’t give up. And in that relentless Love, we find that we move into fullness. As God loves us perfectly, we become more like Him. It’s His love that pursues us into wholeness.

And as He loves us, so we learn to love others. Loving in the image of Love.

So we pursue those He loves with that same relentless love. Not giving up. Loving them as they move into fullness. Seeing the best and not the worst. Believing in them as they journey. Through their journey.

Loving the crap outta them.

Actually, I was reading through the Old Testament prophets in my devotionals about a month ago, and that’s what I journaled. ‘I feel in this season God is going to show me to power of love to change people. Not my love, but His Love, in me, flowing out and changing people. That Love that doesn’t give up and doesn’t let go and never stops hoping. That Love that He first gives me.’

So that’s where I’ve been at this month.

My parents have been here, and my precious friend Rach has visited, and I have had some amazing moments with the people that have my heart, but in the quietness of an empty house and a full spirit, I’ve finally been able to grab the head space to articulate it.

Live beautifully, dream passionately, love completely.

And here are some photos from the last week 🙂