Love actually

I love lots of people - my husband, family, certain friends - but loving people is like having lots of nerve endings exposed to the world. When someone hurts someone I love, it hurts me so much I sometimes think I'll go crazy - I can't sleep, staying up plotting vengeance or crying with rage and frustration and pain. Wrong me and I may forgive you some day. Wrong someone I love and you've earned my undying enmity and a voodoo doll with your name on it. My husband, taking a line from Toni Morrison, often tells me my "love is too thick." It is, to the point of sinfulness. It may be my greatest sin: my inability to forgive and love my enemies. "But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . . And if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them." Luke 6:27, 32.

There's hate and bitterness and vengeance in my heart, even though I know it hurts God more than I am hurt to see me reacting this way.

Jesus has asked one thing only of me: that I feed His sheep. And I can't do it. Not if that sheep is someone who has wronged someone I love. I love Jesus. I want to obey Him in the one thing He's asked of me. And I just can't do it.