A love that doesn't stop.

I went to Santa Cruz today with two friends from work, Mary and Jason, and our discussion over gyros turned into sharing our testimonies. I was telling them about how my faith did a 180 about two and a half years ago. God was the most openly evident in His love and faithfulness to me at the time when I deserved it the least, when I was not living like I should have been. Regardless of what I was doing, He was still relentless in His love for me and came alongside me and my pain. I was finally able to see that His love for me was not dependant on what I did or didn’t do. He loved me with perfect love always because He is God. When I finished telling them this, Mary replied, “And that’s basically what our job is.”

It’s only taken me a month and a half to see this.

Unconditional love is so crazy and so beautiful to me. I’ve only just begun to accept what that looks like coming from God. As people, we are obviously not capable of unconditional love, but we can try to get as close to it as possible and let God fill in the rest.

I came off of a very crazy week. Monday consisted of waking up to one girl throwing up before school, writing an incident report about misused medications, making a report to Child Protection Services about an unreported case of abuse, and having a new girl arrive. And that was just Monday. Tuesday consisted of a girl getting so mad at a decision I made that she literally yelled at me for minutes – best cuss-out session I’ve received yet – and then threatened to relapse because of me. That was also the day that a girl interrupted me mid-sentence to tell me exactly how ugly I was. I could go on, but I think you get the picture: This was not my most pleasant week.

But you know what? I left my shift still very much loving each girl and having their individual situations on my heart during this break. Either I’m crazy or God has a hold on my heart … I’m definitely going with option two.

This job is draining, but it is so worth it and is rocking my world and how I see things. Having a girl open up to you and tell you about how her gang involvement started at the age of 8 will do that to you. Having a girl re-processing a rape with you will do that as well. Having a new girl arrive, excited to not be locked up like she was for the past two months in the hall also will.

These girls are touching my life in so many ways, and I only pray that I can do the same for them. I’ve seen how my heart has changed since God showed me how much I am worth and how His love for me is fully unconditional. I know He can do the same for each of them.