ἀγαπητός

The summer of 2010 was a life changing, mind blowing, surprise around every corner summer. I think that almost a year and a half later, I'm still trying to work out everything that happened, realizing what God was up to, and still standing in awe.

It really started back in February of that year where after 10 years, the verse that I was living in day in and day out shifted. Not to one that was more important, just a different one that comes from Isaiah 26: 'Yes Lord, walking in the ways of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts. My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you ... Lord, you establish peace for us; all that we have accomplished, you have done for us.'

In the midst of that, wrestling with life in Denmark, what God was calling me to.... It was a summer of just watching God at work and trying to get out of His way as fast as I possibly could. Watching people who were healed physically, people who were falling in love with Jesus again and some for the first time, and the beauty of redemption and restoration happening before my very eyes at camp after camp after camp...

At all these different camps, you received a wrist band. It had the practical purpose of showing that you had a meal ticket but the beauty of being a reminder when you went home. The problem? Let's be honest. For those who have experienced these....after a couple weeks, they would start to smell. I mean really smell. So I would clip them to my backpack, but I wanted more. I wanted a reminder every day when I looked down at my wrist that no matter what I thought was happening that God is still in the business of miracles. Whether we see them or not.

So I decided to get a tattoo. But after the last one that I got (which I still love), if it was going to hurt that much again, I was going to have to be really sure. So I waited. And prayed. And waited. And prayed. And a year later, I figured it out.

You see in the midst of all the beauty and chaos that was happening in Denmark, in the midst of the darkness, there was something that I just kept begging God for. I just desired to be loved. It was my prayer over and over and over again until one day the answer came. "Didn't Israel want a king?" Perhaps odd. But it cut straight to the heart. Day in and day out, the people had begged God for a King. And He kept responding...you already have One. God was giving me the very desires of my heart. And I kept saying over and over...I want to be loved. And He answered with, you are loved. You are my beloved.

So starting in July, every morning as an act of discipline, to remember this, I would write
this word for "Beloved" in Greek on my wrist. Every morning. For 2.5 months. I would be so careful because permanent marker isn't so permanent, and it would always wash off. And I would write it on again. Finally after saving up the money, it became permanent. And while I was excited and had no regrets whatsoever, I missed the morning discipline of writing it on my wrist every day...

Until I was more excited that it wouldn't wash off. In the same way that God will not love me more or less...simply that I am known as His beloved.