“There is something I have not told you, and when you know,
you will be ashamed of me, and ashamed to be my friend,” she
whispered quietly.
“I have been married and divorced 4 times, and I didn’t want
you to know.”
I took her lovely face into my hands and said, “You have
befriended me. You bubble over when you talk. You reach out
to everyone you know. You are interesting, intelligent,
attractive, loving, and that is what I know about you, my sweet
friend. I would never define you by your past. I love who you
are right now, just as you are, and I am so very thankful for
you!”
Her eyes widened as though she couldn’t believe what I was
saying. We gave each other a warm embrace. She said, “No
one has ever loved me like that before. Even my mother had a
hard time accepting my loud, extraverted personality and I have
been looking for love my whole life. That is why I kept leaving
my marriages; because they didn’t fill my need for love.
And then, in the last day of the conference, she opened her
heart to the love of Jesus. She needed to feel the love of a
friend that she could see, before she could believe in the love
of God that she had to imagine. And so, I left her some roses
and a card in her hotel room as a visible evidence of love.
The text I received at the airport said, “No one has ever shown
me this kind of generous love in my whole life. I feel like a new
person. You have changed my life forever.”
Love is God’s universal language that reaches into the hearts
of others and shows them their worth in God’s eyes and in