"We please Him most, not by frantically trying to make ourselves good but by throwing ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections and believing that He understands everything and loves us still."

-A.W. Tozer

I am a mess. Clothes form a patchwork carpet across my floor, unfinished drawings lay in wait on my bedside table, while bottles of water and mugs of coffee meet their end on my desk. And like my room, I can be found faraway, lost in a flock of thought. This messy mind is filled to the brim with ideas, anxieties, wishes and worries.

And because I am found in this mess, I can see it all, out in the open. I can see the downfalls, the misgivings, the hurt and the pain. I am plagued with "what if's" and "only if's." Great worry comes to me when I see myself, how I desperately want perfection, how I must patch, mend, and sew each failure in my life.

Sometimes I wonder how God can love me. How He can see such an awful mess of a person and find any redeeming quality in me. Why does He love the one who runs away so far, so often? Why does He not grow weary of the chase?

And that's just it. It's nothing I've done, could do or could have ever done. With each day God chooses me. He chooses to love me, He chooses to Father me, and He chooses to show me greater affection that anything on this earth could provide (Ephesians 2:4-5).

And because He chooses us, you and I, we never have to fear His departure. We never have to wonder if we've messed up too much, if we've run too far, or if we're just too broken enough to mend. That's the beauty of Jesus–– He loves the messy ones. The castaways, the sinners, the afflicted, they are His.

Don't run. I have been running, fearing His judgement, even fearing His plan for me. God does not want us to run from Him in our brokenness. Friends, He understands our humanness, He walked in it. He understands our confusion, our doubts, our battles. He is gracious in that, beckoning us forward. Someone recently told me, "God is not mad at you...He is a gentle father." He doesn't scorn us when we fall, He is there with steadiness, as He pulls us forward and farther. While overused, this verse came to mind, "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29:11).

When we begin to view God as love, not as fear, something switches in us. I've noticed so much recently, how humans desperately just want love. We reach for people to accept us, hold us, reassure us in our doubts. I believe that's God, planting the seed of affection in our hearts, so we can seek out the ultimate Source of love.

I cannot gather all that I am and make myself whole. I cannot hide where I am torn, I cannot ready what has been deeply broken. I can only stand in front of a gentle Father, and allow Him to mend each fragmented piece, and breathe order into me once again. But this only happens with an open, honest spirit. This only happens when we tell God of our humanness, of our aching hearts and our selfish desires–– when we stop running further into our mess (Jeremiah 29:13). This is when we truly have relationship with Him, believing that He hears us, knows our hearts and chooses to love us still.

"Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world."

-1 John 4:4