How God Can Love You Back to Wholeness
1 John 4:19 says “We love because He first loved us.” Without God, we don’t know what real love is, and we can’t love the people in our lives fully without first knowing and receiving the love of God. God paid the ultimate price for us because He loves us so much. He sacrificed His one and only Son for us, while we were still sinners, while we were running away from Him and turning away from His love. God is love and when we open ourselves up to Him and His unconditional love, it allows us to grow in compassion, kindness and gentleness so that we can walk in love with everyone we meet.
My life shows how God’s love not only heals us from pain and trauma, but helps us love ourselves and others completely. This is the story of how God loved me back to wholeness and how He opened me up to receive and give love without fear and reservation.
Losing Myself in the Pain
Growing up, I was happy, kind and always smiling, willing to be a friend to anyone that needed one. When I got to High School, though, things in my life started to unravel and I fell into a really dark place. When I was around sixteen, my parents got divorced. It felt like our family had been torn apart and I had nothing to hold onto to keep me steady.
Sadly, as a child, I didn’t have much of a relationship with God. I didn’t even really understand who God is, or what being a Christian meant. I didn’t have anyone to trust in anymore, and because I didn’t know and love God, I lost myself in the hurt I felt. I shut off my emotions, pretending I wasn’t hurt at all, even though I felt like my world had ended. To make things worse, my dad wasn’t able to process his hurt in a healthy way, and so closed himself off and abandoned me, not wanting any sort of relationship with me.
I was a mess inside. I felt angry all the time. I was so lost and confused and felt a constant emptiness, like no one understood what I was going through.
Things only got worse when I started dating my first serious boyfriend. Our relationship was rocky, toxic and full of gaslighting and manipulation. I didn’t feel safe or protected, but I thought love meant staying through it all. I stayed in that relationship for much longer than I should have, but because I didn’t have the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I couldn’t see just how bad things got.
When I was nineteen, that relationship finally imploded for the last time and when we broke up, I was broken inside. I turned to partying and drinking to try and numb the constant feeling of emptiness and pain. I kept hearing about Jesus from other students that I hung out with, and how He had rescued them. They looked so happy and at peace, but I was doubtful that my pain could ever be healed.
Trying to Find Healing
One evening, with hesitation, I joined one of the Bible study groups that I got invited to, and things were going well, until they all started praying in tongues over me, which let’s face it, for a non-believer, is extremely weird! I avoided the Jesus crowd after that and continued trying to get rid of the hurt I felt inside by turning to Bhuddism and meditation. Yoga and being zen became my thing.
Meditation and slowing my thoughts did help me focus my brain away from the trauma of my past, but that empty feeling was still following me everywhere I went. I was still emotionally shut off, struggling to say “I love you.” to the people that I really did love. I didn’t like to be hugged either, feeling very uncomfortable and vulnerable whenever someone tried to show me their love and affection.
Finding the Love of Jesus
When my husband, Andrew, and I started dating, I realised that he had also been badly affected by the trauma of his life. The two of us, with our unhealed hurts, struggled to communicate in a healthy way and were both too stuck in our hurt to give one another a safe place to heal. We loved each other very much and could both see potential in our relationship, but we were both holding back because of fear of abandonment, trust issues and wanting to be in control.
A couple of years later, my mom invited me to join her at her local church to celebrate her getting baptised. I felt so comfortable and welcomed by the church community and I loved the service so much that the next weekend I encouraged Andrew to come to a service there with me. He felt the same welcoming and kind love that I had felt the previous weekend. God’s love had found us through the church and we felt a strong connection that kept us coming back week after week.
God healed me with His love and through His word
Over this time we grew closer to God and closer to each other and during one of the services I felt something calling me to get baptised. I whispered this to Andrew, who said he had been feeling the same way and that we should do it. That day was the best day of my life. The feeling of the water rushing over me as the Holy Spirit came and filled me up was so beautiful and overwhelming. I have never been the same after that experience.
God Healed Me by Loving Me
Since the day I received Jesus as my Lord and Saviour, slowly, over the course of many years, the fruits of the Spirit have been coming alive in me and in my life. As God’s love filled us up, Andrew and I started opening up completely to one another, fully letting each other in, even into the darkest places of ourselves. We told each other things we had never told anyone else, we spoke openly about the hurts of our childhoods and how that had affected our behaviour as adults. We joke now that we were each other’s therapists, but as God loved us back into wholeness, we were able to love one another fully and let go of the pain, hurt and mistrust that had taken root in us from past experiences.
This time of accepting God’s love with open arms and letting Him heal me through His love, allowed me to finally break free from the emptiness and pain that had been following me around for most of my life. God healed me to wholeness through His love and through the love of my husband.
My paster and bridesmaids praying over me and my marriage on my wedding day
A Whole New Me
Thinking back to all those years ago, to that young woman, who was filled with so must distrust and fear, that she struggled to say “I love you.” and felt so uncomfortable when she was hugged, and comparing her to who I am today, I feel immense gratitude. I’m now a woman of God who tells the people in her life that she loves them every chance she gets and who now loves cuddles so much that her love language is physical touch. A transformation this big can only be because of the almighty hand of God and His healing love.
I feel so loved, safe and secure in the arms of my Heavenly Father. My earthly dad may have abandoned me, but I know God will never leave me nor forsake me! He is my rock, my refuge and my shelter in the storms of life. I am able to love fully and openly, because He first loved me back to wholeness.
If you’re struggling right now, trapped in the darkness, feeling unloved and with nothing to hold onto – hold onto the love that will never fail you, the love that can heal you and the love that will never forsake you. Hold onto God because His perfect love will cast out your fear (1 John 4:18) and He will love you back to wholeness, just like He did for me.
