Rebekah Wright Online

I recently got my feelings hurt. Not something that I dwell on too often, but this time it got to me. I went to bed feeling down and quite honestly a little grumpy. I woke up the next morning with a sharpie note on a napkin from my husband.

It simply said, “Love covers a multitude of sin. Let love win.”

I’ve made it very clear that my goal for 2014 is to love people. I have a verse for the year – 1 Peter 4:8 and I talked about loving people deeply. Let me be honest here – when I set out to love people, I wasn’t thinking about people who would hurt me. When I said I wanted to love people I meant I want to do cute things to show people I’m thinking about them, I want to be patient with my kids and husband, I want to build deeper relationships with those I don’t know well, I want to lift people up in prayer. I had dreams of showing love to people that life has been hard on. I wanted to not judge people on their past, but love the person they are in the present. Sounds good doesn’t it?

But I failed to put into my goal and thinking the last part of that verse about loving deeply- for love covers a multitude of sins. See I had no problem with love covering a multitude of past sins, or sins committed against someone else. But what about those sins that others commit that involve me?

There it was on a napkin placed in the bathroom at 7 am. Let love cover a multitude of sins. A part of my goal that I knew I had to include. And by loving people who hurt me, I don’t mean develop thicker skin or remaining silent. I think both of those things are necessary and appropriate at times. But sometimes loving someone means having a difficult discussion with them about how their actions impacted you. Sometimes loving someone means not just letting a sin slide, it means facing it head on. But facing it head on covered in LOVE. When do I know which situations need grace to let love cover it and not address it and which ones need to be addressed head on in love? I believe that’s the Holy Spirit’s job to tell me, and if it’s His job to tell me – I better be bathing the entire situation in prayer to know what He wants.

January down, hard lesson number one down. Here’s to 11 more months of discovering what God is teaching me when I say I want to love people.

Rebekah

On December 31^st I sat down to write out my list of goals for 2014. The night before as we were going to bed, I told Brian I was going to get up early and work on this list. After a few minutes of talking through resolutions he said,

“In 2014 I want to Love God.”

Then he said, Have fun getting up early, rolled over and went to sleep. Just like that. Simple.

“Simple” has never been my strong suit. I am more of a pro and cons weigher/chart maker/list writer. So the next morning I got up before the rest of the family, got my coffee, my notepad and pen and started my list.

I began with the traditional “better myself” type goals mainly because those are the resolutions you are supposed to make, right? So after I got done with the read more, exercise regularly, and eat healthy stuff- I started to think about what this year held and what I wanted to be at the end of it.

After about 30 minutes of ideas of how to be a better wife, mom, sister, daughter, and friend, I wrote in big letters across the bottom of the page- LOVE PEOPLE. I guess what my husband came up with in a few minutes wasn’t such a bad idea after all. A short phrase to focus on for the entire year instead of making things complicated. But I still had my list to help with the specifics of how that was going to get done.

The next day I heard that the Bible app YouVersion was encouraging people to choose their verse for 2014. I thought this was a great idea. But again, where do you start? So much of my life right now is about learning to have faith, to trust God even when the situation seems impossible. So I thought for sure it would be something about that. But as I read through some verses I had marked over the past year one stood out to me:

1 Peter 4:8 Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins.

There it was. Love People. What I love about this verse is that it doesn’t just say be kind or help one another out. It says to show DEEP love for each other. Another version says it this way: keep loving one another earnestly. This means sincerely. It’s not just having a good intention, but being serious about it.

So I had it. A nice phrase and a verse to go with it. As my first act of “loving people”, Brooklyn and I got out the markers and stickers and made thank you notes for everyone who gave us Christmas gifts. We had fun doing it and got all the cards done and addressed in an afternoon.

Then we started packing to leave on the next trip. Then we traveled for 2 days straight. Then we were in a one room apartment for a weekend. What does any of that have to do with thank you notes? Nothing, except that I let it all distract me from actually getting stamps and mailing the cards.

One of the thank you cards was for my grandpa. I didn’t have much of a relationship with him growing up and this year for the first time he sent a gift to my husband and me for Christmas. I wanted to make sure he knew how much we appreciated the gift.

This week my grandpa passed away. I still have his thank you card.

I know to some this sounds silly, but part of me still wanted to send the card. I wanted to tell him we loved him and appreciated his generosity, even if he wouldn’t get the card.

I didn’t send the card. Instead, I am keeping it as a reminder. My sealed and addressed envelope is my reminder that life is short and good intentions don’t love people – ACTIONS LOVE PEOPLE.

The next few posts I’m going to go more in depth with what loving people means to me. But above all, in 2014 I am resolving to not just say I’m GOING to show love to people. I am going to take the ACTION needed to show deep love.

Rebekah

Let Love Cover It

When Good Intentions are Not Enough