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May 10, 2005
My One and Only
I asked my therapist one day if I was his favorite client. When he paused, I knew I was in trouble.
“Well,” he said. He tented his fingers and gazed upward, undoubtedly searching for an answer that, while true, would also keep me from running out of the room screaming.
“The thing is, I don’t think of my clients in terms of favorites,” he finally said.
I stared at him in disbelief. Oh, c’mon, I thought to myself. Everyone plays favorites. As a former teacher, I know this is true. When I looked out over a sea of faces in my classroom, there was always one or maybe two that elicited my affection more than the rest. Maybe it’s because I myself have favorites that I always want to be the favorite. It’s hard for me to be one of many and still feel that I have value as a person. (Thank goodness I'm not a Borg.)
It’s not only my therapist I harass about this. I also want to be God’s favorite. I your God am a jealous God, God says.
Well, I want to respond, I am a jealous child.
When I see a church van with a John 3:16 sticker on the window and a bunch of happy teens in the back, I shake my head. How could God so love the entire world? That concept’s way too abstract for me to wrap my mind around. What interests me is whether or not God loves *me.*
I *so* do not want this to be true. I don’t want to be so selfish and insecure that I begrudge God’s loving his world.
So I repent.
And I try to find new ways of understanding the depth of God’s love for his children—me and all his children.
In my reading, I recently came across this gem from Marilyn Robinson’s "Gilead:" “Augustine says the Lord loves each of us as an only child.” From the way my heart jumped within me, I knew I’d found something big. I tracked down the reference, which is from Augustine’s "Confessions." Before his conversion to Christianity, when Augustine was held captive to all kinds of vice and heresy, Augustine’s mother, Marcia, wept for his soul night and day. God comforted his mother in a vision about which Augustine says this: “Whence came this vision unless it was that thy ears were inclined toward her heart? O thou Omnipotent Good, thou carest for every one of us as if thou didst care for him only…!” God’s tenderness towards Marcia was so great that it was as though she were the only person in existence, the only person on earth that God had to minister to.
I saw that I had been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking, “Am I your favorite?” the better question is, “How much do you love me?”
And God’s answer is, I love you as though you were the only child that I had to love.
Being God’s only child means that I can approach him without jockeying for attention. It means that God’s lap is always free; it’s never occupied with another child. It means that God’s focus is trained fully on me; he’s never distracted by other kids tugging at his robe. Don’t get me wrong; those other kids are still there. But they’re his only children, too. They can make their own arrangements, and I don’t have to worry about them (nor they about me). Being God’s only child means that I’m the apple of his eye. How much richer an image than the anxiety-filled quest of being God’s favorite!
Do you have a need that’s similar to mine? Maybe you’re one of nine kids and never quite got enough attention when you were small. Maybe you always felt overlooked growing up because you weren’t the smartest or the prettiest or the most popular. Maybe you even feel that way now.
To you, God says, “You are my one and only. You are the apple of my eye.”
God’s heart is big enough to encompass all our hurts and weaknesses, even those that seem petty or selfish. I rest in God’s lap today, knowing it’s the right size to hold me and me alone—along with those millions of others that are God’s only children, too.
Posted by Lisa at May 10, 2005 05:12 PM
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Comments
"He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it." Revelation 2:17
"God has cared to make me for Himself," says the victor with the white stone, "And he has called me that which I like best."
George MacDonald
Posted by: Marion at May 11, 2005 09:45 AM