Do You Love Your Life?

Well, y’all, I’m home from She Speaks. THANK YOU for your sweet prayers and words of encouragement. She Speaks was, as it always is, incredible.  I wish there was a way to share every single moment of it with you.  I’ll be sorting through my notes and photos and business cards over the next few weeks and you can expect to hear more about the incredible messages from Lysa TerKeurst and Christine Caine … and the incredible new friends I made and what they are up to … and the words God whispered into my heart during those days away.

But today, I just want to say this — as much as I love opportunities to share with women, there really is no place I’d rather be than home. Right here in my very real life.

I’ve been thinking about this yearning we all seem to have at times for a life that looks different, better, more exciting, more glamorous. We look at Instagram images and Facebook updates and Pinterest wardrobes and our lives feel drab and boring. I know, y’all, I feel it too sometimes.

So how do we retrain our thoughts, redefine our desires, and reignite our joy for the normal, every day lives we have?

I would love to give you a great post {with a fabulous pinnable image} titled “10 Ways to Love Your Life NOW.” {I imagine some of you wish I could write that post also.} But what if it isn’t so much about loving your life as it is loving the Lord?

You see, I don’t love my life every day. I’ve experienced some hard times and at one point in my early twenties even attempted suicide. I’ve walked the road of infertility, watched my husband on life support, prayed as my parents struggled to save their own marriage, and seen up close the devastation adultery brings into the lives of people you love. There are days when my life has been most assuredly NOT awesome.

The Bible doesn’t say love your life. Scripture calls us to love people and love God.

This is what I think {and what I’m studying and pondering}, I think Paul was able to be content no matter what his circumstances not because he loved his life but because he loved Jesus more than his life.  That’s why he could say with all sincerity, “To live is Christ and to die is gain.”

Maybe, just maybe, we’ve set our sights too low. The goal isn’t to love this life but rather to love the One who died to give us life.

Jesus said if we love our lives, we must lose them. I’m still sorting through what that means and how that looks for me in this season. But I know this, I don’t ever want to love my life more than I love the Lord. I don’t want pursuing a good life to be more important than serving a Faithful God.

xo,
Teri Lynne

What is the Lord showing you these days? What new lessons are you learning? {Or old lessons are you re-learning?}