Love Starts with Surrender

Let’s talk about the complexities of family relationships—situations that test our faith, stretch our patience, and deepen our understanding of grace. We’ll share personal testimonies about navigating conflict and reconciliation with those closest to us. These stories continue the heart of our earlier article, “Loving Well Teaches Truth,” written about the DTS Centennial service project. Just as that initiative demonstrated love through the fruit of the Spirit in our community, the scenes we present here show what it looks like to live out that same kind of love in our homes, where our hearts are often captive to the tension between expectation and reality. When it comes to faith, family, and forgiveness, loving well is how the Lord does his most transformative work.

(Felicia) Before the Justice of the Peace finished “for better,” my fiancé cut in and vowed, “I will.” At “for worse” he repeated, “I will.” For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health . . . he met each condition with “I will.” Then the unconditional was asked: to love as Christ. And he promised, “I will.”

But that moment was not this moment. And in this one, to him, I was too difficult to love. He said he was tired of the fact that I still go to counseling after all these years yet have no idea what he needs or how to help him because I see him through the eyes of my own issues. I showed him the homework from my last session, which included my exploration of his unmet needs. But at one triggering word, he sidelined my transparency and misjudged the posture of my heart.

An argument followed, and the broad strokes of “never”/ “always” language began to shift our story into the “he said” / “she said” polarization of revisionism, prioritizing the negatives over the positives. In its escalation, I battled his spiral into tone-deaf descent with Philippians 4:8, the first Bible verse we’d memorized together four decades prior. Its wisdom advised us to change the focus of our narrative: “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (NIV). But my declaration of Scripture did not have the immediate effect for which I hoped. Instead, my effort was met with a charge of hypocrisy.

Feeling my words hopelessly twisted, and with tears that further frustrated him running down my cheeks, I retaliated, attacking his leadership as oppressive and belittling, and walked out of the room, confirming his assertion that I was the difficult one to love, while I labeled him the same.

(Tranece) The ridiculously ginormous oversized chair seemed to swallow my entire body as I sat in a windowless room with no perception of time. What a waste of an hour, I thought. Tightly hugging the pillow, I stared at the office door. Why am I here, I wondered. My therapist patiently waited for me to process my thoughts and respond to his question. A box of Kleenex on the small oak table invited me to release my bottled-up tears and pour out my emotions and reflections. Slowly, I turned my head back in his direction as my eyes welled up with tears.

He looked at me and said softly, “The relationship you desire to have with your mother will never happen; grieve that relationship and move on.” Paralyzed in disbelief, my entire body tensed up. His words pierced me, leaving me disheartened, and the more I thought about what he’d said, the greater my frustration grew toward my mother. I left the office feeling hopeless. Deep down, I still longed for her. I needed more than just her presence—I needed her approval, her protection, her warmth. I needed a mother who would choose me, who would love me without condition, and who would see me. No matter what my age, a part of me was still that little girl waiting for my mother’s embrace.

—————————————

The Bible does not ignore the brokenness of families. It acknowledges that we live in a fallen world where relationships often resist God’s design. Even in that brokenness, God calls us to walk by his Spirit. Galatians 5:22–23 (NET) reminds us that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Notice that love comes first. But what do we do when we find it difficult to love?

Jesus’s answer is twofold. Matthew 22:37–38 instructs us to love the Lord and love our neighbor as ourselves. God’s love for us teaches us how to do so. His love is unconditional and unearned, given by grace. As we receive it, so we should extend it. Often, however, the grace we are grateful to receive, we are reluctant to give. It is difficult to demonstrate this type of love—God’s unconditional love—and attempting to do so in our own strength proves impossible. Regardless of our diligence or dedication, we cannot achieve and sustain this kind of love by our own effort alone. We tire, our grace and mercy drained, and find ourselves in the second part of John 15:5, where Jesus says that apart from him, we “can accomplish nothing.”

In this place, a perilous shift of perspective can occur. Our struggles first inform us that it is difficult to love, but frustration reframes the struggle as the challenge to love the difficult ones. We think conditional love is now justified because they did or did not do something, and boundaries provide a viable solution to our discomfort until they change. But when change does not happen, or when dysfunction puts down roots in a family, God doesn’t remove the requirement to love unconditionally.

Whenever our love has conditions, it’s evidence that we are not fully connected to Christ. Our struggle to love well highlights our need to draw closer to him. When we abide with Jesus, his Spirit enables us to live in a way that reflects his image. As we submit the difficult ones to the Lord’s transforming work through prayer, we find in him healing for the difficult one we have become. In our surrender, our hearts, minds, and, subsequently, our actions become like those of our Savior freely giving grace to others. No matter how long it takes love to grow, we recognize that whenever we walk into a room, two enter—ourselves and our Lord. And we are changed. We see differently. We discern differently. We love differently. That’s why Jesus’s words in the first part of John 15:5 so beautifully balance the last part: “I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me—and I in him—bears much fruit, because apart from me you can accomplish nothing.”

(Felicia) At the other end of the house, I brewed a cup of tea in silence. On my way back to our bedroom, I passed his office door. It was open. Was there hope? As I peeked in, I heard our bedroom door slam. I turned around, expecting the awkward moment that our reluctant paths would cross as we headed in opposite directions. But no footfalls sounded in the hallway. Proceeding with curiosity I found the bedroom door closed. I assumed he slammed it when leaving the bedroom. But when I opened the door, I found him seated on the recliner opposite our bed. He had slammed the door going back into the bedroom, the loud noise not reflecting defiance, but submission. It echoed determination, not defeat. It resonated with devotion, not division. He was back in the fight for us, not against each other.

Before me was a man surrendered to Matthew 22, under which, despite emotion and consternation, love reigned—and hope returned. I knew how upset he was, how exasperated he was. Yet he surrendered—not in apology, but by his presence; not in concession, but in compassion. My frustrated words and actions had not deserved his grace, yet grace they received. I remembered another time I’d received such grace, when I stared into the mirror of acknowledgement and understood my flawed humanity for the first time. Jesus knew that the power of his unconditional love far outweighed the power of judgment. He paid its price in humility, and I surrendered to the gift of his unconditional love.

My husband’s act of humility informed my own. We continued our conversation. It was easier to submit to a man surrendered to the Lord. His love had reached out and touched my heart, and I, likewise, surrendered.

(Tranece) I deeply respected my therapist’s education, experience, expertise, knowledge, and skill. His perspective offered clarity and helped me see my situation from a different angle, even when it was difficult to hear. His words, though painful at first, prompted me to honestly reflect on my expectations and the kind of relationship I hoped to build with my mother. At the same time, I realized that his approach didn’t fully align with my own beliefs and understanding. I started to realize that I didn’t have to just roll over and accept the situation as it was because my surrender to the Lord would open me up to the hope that He could fix what seemed beyond repair.

I love my mother and wanted to see her; however, I knew spending too much time with her would inevitably lead to conflict. As I desperately longed for closeness that seemed out of reach, I remembered that Exodus 20:12 still requires me to honor my mother. What would honoring her look like? I understand that my therapist may have wanted me to accept the reality of human limitations, but Scripture points us to God as the One who gives us hope, heals our hearts, and fills our voids. My expectations began to shift. The less I expected her to be perfect, the more freely I could offer grace. As I made a concerted effort to understand my mother, the way I interacted with her shaped the way she interacted with me. I learned to extend grace to her, and she reflected that same grace to me. With our joint efforts, our relationship blossomed into a beautiful reflection of Christ’s unconditional love.

—————————————

Love is a fruit of the Spirit, and it begins with a heart surrendered to Christ. To bear this fruit, we must remain connected to the true vine. Our struggles to love others as ourselves indicate that we have drifted from him. Unconditional love signifies love’s presence—and Christ’s. So, when it wanes, before it leads us to judge another person as difficult, may it be a flashing beacon toward our own spiritual need. And may we start with surrender again. When we truly understand that we didn’t deserve Christ’s love—and yet he gave it freely—we realize that we’re called to love others from that same humble place.