Querida

They say the longer you know someone, the better you know them.
(Unless, of course, you’re me, and the “Someone” in question is Jesus.)

You’d think I’d know Him better by now, after almost 20 years of calling Him Lord.  You’d think I’d be able to at least be able to predict or find patterns in Him.  You’d certainly think I’d understand all the basics about how He feels about me, right?  I’ve certainly had years to practice.
It’s like learning a language.  You think you’re “conversational” in the foreign tongue until a native speaker has a conversation with you and you feel like a deer in the headlights and COMPLETELY humbled (not that I’m speaking from personal experience here or anything).
Like discovering layers of words and meanings in a new dialect, sometimes it takes a long, drawn-out process for God to deepen the layers of my knowledge of Him.  First He shows Jordan something about Jordan, then He uses that to teach Jordan something about Jesus.

One of my favorite words used in conversation in Monterrey is the word “querida.”  It has many meanings, but basically it’s a term of endearment that is the equivalent of saying, “dear,” “honey,” or “sweetie” in Spanish.  You wouldn’t use that word with someone you just met, and you wouldn’t use it with a casual friend.  This is a term you use with someone you care about deeply.  (Another great one I don’t actually hear that often is “amada,” which is a more intense form of expressing your care for somebody.  It’s like saying “beloved” and is meant more for romantic relationships.)

I’m realizing that in every language of the world, Jesus uses both terms with us.

We all can mentally conclude that God loves us.  Right?  We grew up hearing it.  We sang “Jesus Loves Me” in Sunday school.  But we don’t tend to live our lives as though His love matters to us that much.  For most of us, that’s because we’re rarely aware of feeling loved at all.  We work so hard to become like Jesus and to obey His will, then marvel at other Christians who seem to not try very hard in their lives and yet get all the blessings we’ve been working toward and praying for for years.  We feel disconnected when the pastor talks about intimacy with God and maintaining fullness of joy and peace in the midst of life’s firestorms.

At times, everything I just typed above has been the perfect description of me.  And when I get stuck in this pattern of focusing on what I’m doing (and how it’s not working), it sets me up to wander off-course.  “Sure, God loves me; He has to; He’s God.  But I’m pretty sure He doesn’t ‘like’ me.  He probably just tolerates me . . . because He has to.”

Recently I let myself admit I was perplexed about God.  For some time I’ve felt Him indirectly indicating I was to persevere through a situation that was only causing emotional pain as time wore on.  I started to wonder if my feelings mattered at all to God.  Maybe they didn’t.  Maybe God wasn’t as concerned about me (as a holistic person) as He was about the result – which I hoped would come quickly!  Thinking this way and asking myself these hard questions revealed more layers of questions I had beneath.  Was God really kind?  Does God’s love really make a difference in the day-to-day?  Why am I here?  Does any of this even matter?

I’ve spent most of my conscious life trying so hard to please God – or rather, to not disappoint Him.  Over the past 20 years I suppose I formed ideas of who He is and who I am supposed to be, ideas that slowly moved further and further off-course as time passed.  In 2013, I promised God I would always say YES to Him.  I wrote about it incessantly, having found freedom in the lifestyle of and commitment to His will.  I determined that whatever He told me to do, I would absolutely do it, 100%, no matter the cost.

And that’s so great.  I’m sure God smiled when I courageously puffed out my young chest and pledged my undying obedience.

But over time, a combination of my personality, some unhealthy thinking patterns, and subtle but incessant spiritual attacks undermined the focus of the YES.  I was no longer saying yes because I wanted to please Him.  I was saying yes because I thought that’s the ONLY way He could be pleased with me.  And I expected that the more I said YES to Him, the more He would be pleased with me and the more He would reward me.  I guess I felt like I had to catch up, as if to “make up” all the ground I’d lost from all the mistakes I’ve made.

This week I took several hours to identify and write down some lies I’d been questioning about God.  They ranged from, “I don’t matter that much to God in the grand scheme of things . . . do I?” to “God doesn’t care about my emotions or my feelings . . . does He?”  To see them written on paper was astonishing, after years of them being hidden and secretly internalized although never surfacing and certainly never being spoken aloud.

The last one hit me the hardest.  The question was: “Did God create me just so He could use me?  Is my purpose is to be obedient to whatever He tells me to do, submissive always to His will, and useful?”

Wait.  This was so sneaky.  Because these things are true in a sense.  We are to submit to His will and be obedient to His word.  But, God created me for the purpose of using me?  That’s why I was created?  That’s my sole function in this life?  To be useful?

My younger self would have reasoned: look at Hudson Taylor.  Look at Amy Carmichael, Mother Teresa, Jim and Elisabeth Elliot.  They left everything when God told them to go reach the lost and care for His sheep.  It seemed like their destiny to be “used” in that way.  They were being useful.  Right?

Well . . . .

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m older today than I’ve ever been, yet I admit I feel like I know less than I’ve ever known.  The more I learn, the younger and less wise I feel.
But walk this through with me for a minute, if you will.
Here’s what I’m starting to understand about being “useful.”  (And since everything Jesus-related takes an eternity to learn, I guarantee I will still be developing this idea for years to come.)

Hudson Taylor, Amy Carmichael, Mother Teresa, and Jim and Elisabeth Elliot were incredibly shining beacons of our faith and immensely powerful for the Kingdom of God.  Absolutely, no doubt about it.
Yet I am beginning to believe that if Hudson Taylor had been a farmer in England, or Mother Teresa a nun in Macedonia, or Amy a schoolteacher in Ireland, or Jim and Elisabeth remained normal American college graduates making a life for themselves in their hometown — if none of them had traveled the world to spread the gospel — they would be the exact same level of loved and wanted and cherished and liked by God.

The point is this: Your achievements, credentials, experiences, and even Kingdom-building success does not make you one iota more darling to our Lord.  You already are 100% full of His favor and love and desire.

I’m so very glad that Hudson, Mother Teresa, Amy, Jim and Elisabeth took a radical step of faith and grew the Kingdom.  But they would tell you just as quickly that they were just as liked by God the Father as are you and I.

Well then, why bother working for the Kingdom? you must ask.  What’s the point of achieving anything for God?

Oh love, that’s exactly where you have it wrong.  You haven’t yet realized how deeply you matter to Him.  You don’t realized you’ve made it into the club – you’re in.  He wants you.  He likes you in whatever state He finds you, YES even after a bad day when you choose to end in a puddle of dejection with your sweatpants and messy bun and no makeup.

God doesn’t just love you because He has to.  We made a mess of things and severed the connection between Heaven and Earth.  There was nothing forcing Him to choose us.  He acted first.  When He sent Jesus and accepted Jesus’s blood on the cross in our place, He was making His intentions known.  God LIKES you.  He PICKED you.  Even on your worst days when you wonder if anything even matters, He still CHOOSES you to be part of His love story, at the cost of EVERYTHING He holds dear.  Does that not blow your mind?

It’s this kind of acceptance, this nothing-to-prove, grace-filled love that inspired Hudson, Amy, Jim, and all the others in the Great Cloud of Witnesses to go out and do exactly what they did for the Kingdom.  Their actions – your actions – are motivated by love being reciprocated, simple as that.  I’m learning that I don’t need to go out and “perform” in order to win God’s favor, nor should I be trying to “earn” rewards from Him like that.  That’s just not how it works.  And like I said earlier, the more life I live, the more I realize I have to learn.

Dear.  Beloved.  Wanted.  Cherished.  Loved.  Liked.

For who I am right now, not for who I’m “supposed” to be someday.

Not as a teacher.
Not as a missionary.
Not as a successful person.
Not as a wealthy person.
Not even as a good driver (Lord of mercy, help us all, I’m already not).

But liked and wanted for me, just Jordan, just an awkwardly tall and extremely white girl who loves a bunch of random things, who literally canNOT dance to pop music, and who tries too hard to believe she’s funny.
Me in my introverted old-soul days, me in my extroverted never-growing-up days.  Me in the United States, and me in Mexico.  Me in my sweatpants with ten pounds of wet hair slung into a messy bun (seriously, have you seen the volume of this mane lately??) and no makeup to cover those imperfections you probably didn’t even know I was hiding from you.  Me no matter how much I weigh.  Me no matter what sweet or bitter words just tumbled out of my mouth.
I’m liked and wanted and desired the same on days when I’m conquering the world as on the days I am totally wasting.  Because of Jesus, God will never be looking on me with the eagle eye of sardonic criticism . . . or disappointment.

His eyes are love.

I spent my whole life wanting and trying to please God.  What freedom to realize that He was already pleased – and that I could not lose His pleasure.

I am querida.  I am amada.

And the reason I wrote any of these 1,846 words is to tell you:

So are you.