A few months ago, I had driven into the city, and was late for an appointment in Northwest D.C. I managed to find parking and make it into the building, with just enough time for a pit stop before my appointed time. As I came careening out of the bathroom and into the lobby, I turned toward the bank of elevators, and very nearly collided with my husband. As it turned out, in all of D.C., we found each other in front of the same bank of elevators, in the same building, at the exact same moment.

And that wasn’t the only surprise. When I saw him, my heart literally leapt. I was happy in a way I had not experienced since our dating days when it took a taxi ride, two shuttles and a connecting flight to see him. That moment in the lobby was a mix of joy and butterflies. Delight and attraction. Surprise and anticipation. It was love. Love was the first thing that jumped out of me when, for once, I didn’t have time to prepare a response.

What made that response remarkable, because I do love my husband, was that we had parted that morning in the midst of a really big argument. One of those messy ones in which one issue leads to another and the past becomes an off-sides arsenal of weapons with casualties on both sides. It was one of those arguments that chips away at the goodness of things. Really the worst we had had in a while, and although fights like that are part and parcel of a real relationship, this one had left a mark. That being said, in the moment of reunion, in the lobby of that building, there was absolutely nothing left of those churned-up, hurt and angry feelings. Love had championed the moment in such an overwhelming and dominant way that no other sentiment was even vying for real estate.

Had I not run into him in the lobby, I would have most likely reunited with him that evening. I would have heard him come down the driveway and walk through the back door, and chances are, the reunion would have been very different. And that really made me think. It made me think of why I would want a somber, simmering meeting compared to the one I just experienced in the lobby which was really pretty extraordinary.

In the instant of reunion, context was so wholly displaced that the only experience I had room for was the present moment – – sans baggage. It was a moment of clarity that felt like a rare window, a gift offered to me for a reason. So I decided to look deeper into how love informed that moment.

The truth is, I think God gives me an endless supply of love and I dole it out as I see fit. I think He pours it into me and I pick and choose how to divvy it up.

I think about when God gave the Israelites manna (bread) from Heaven…it literally fell from the sky to sustain them every day for their years in the wilderness. But God’s explicit instructions were for them take what they needed for just one day without storing it up for later – – He gave them portions to be used, not kept. I think that’s the way God gives – – because He has an endless supply of everything – – but my natural inclination is to keep my portion and appoint myself chief distribution officer of all God-given things. But that’s not the way it is supposed to work.

Once God gives me access to something, whether it’s manna or love, patience or forgiveness, He has already done the grand distribution, he just wants me to use up what He gave me, either channel it to others, experience it myself, or more often than not, both. He gives me the fruit of His Spirit not to stockpile or withhold, but to use with abandon.

I withheld no good thing from my husband in that lobby. He saw my delight, unrestrained, unsullied by expectation or history. It was like no other moment I had ever experienced. And it was a moment in which His spirit, not mine was at work.

I can do just about everything in love. And I can give it away in so many different packages. Sometimes it’s firm, sometimes romantic, sometimes direct, sometimes tender, sometimes it doesn’t say a word as it works itself out in action, sometimes it’s just my presence, other times it looks like forgiveness, or sounds like truth.

Jesus didn’t withhold his love from the very people who had just nailed him to the cross…. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do….” And not only does Christ forgive the men who are in the process of killing him, but he actually rises to their defense before God. He loves them in astounding ways. There really is no end to the ways I can express the Love to which God has given me access – – it’s whether I choose to love or not that is the question.

I have a friend, Heidi, who with a wave of her hand says to me, “Be released.” It’s what God did for me in the lobby. I was full of feelings about my husband that day, and God waved his hand and said, “Be released…” Be released to the love that is in you for Him…. Be released from the bondage of anger, be released from the weight of being judge and jury, be released from being right, be released to enjoy the fruits of MY spirit, not yours….Be released to love with abandon….and leave everything else to Me.

It is a saving grace that I am to love others as GOD loves me – – as the broken person I am. C.S. Lewis implores his readers to approach God “as you are not as you ought to be.” God loves us as we are. Can I not free myself to love others as they are? Isn’t that how I long to be loved myself? What if I trusted God with Tim, enough to love him unreservedly, generously, kindly, leaving his broken places to God’s tinkering and not my own. What if I granted Tim the benefit of the doubt, no matter what? What if I let grace play a huge role in our relationship? Would any of that diminish me in any way? Or would it simply make things better, regardless of his response?

At the center of me is this overwhelming desire to be loved…, just exactly as I am. For me, receiving that kind of love is the real fuel for life, and is the fatwood for all measure of hope and joy. I have a genuine need to be loved through the grace of those who know me the best. Grace-fueled love heals and sustains. I crave grace-filled love. I know I don’t deserve it, but when I get it makes me better. It’s like a chemical equation that makes no scientific sense. But it ignites in me a place that is of God.  And grace-fueled love…it enables and empowers me to love others in the same way.

We all need that kind of love. I want to be a source of grace-fueled love to the people around me. And if I can get over myself, blow up the list of wrongs I sometimes wield and just shower folks with love instead; if I can listen and show a little restraint with my words and let that Love just slip on by FIRST before anything else comes out, miraculous things happen. Healing happens. Relationship happens. Tenderness and friendship happens. A new history is written…And God, not me, is conducting the show. But when I lead with what’s on my mind, what I need to resolve, what the problem might be, where the injustice occurred or continues to occur, I lose. Relationship is diminished, and fades into oblivion behind the glare of conflict, defensiveness and repeated, fruitless cycles of destruction.

The “baggage” I have with people is not my real baggage. My real baggage is the love I don’t share with them. Stored up love tethers me to unforgiveness and pride. Hoarded love shackles me to selfishness and blame, anger (justifiable or not) and resentment. Holding onto love, withholding it from others, when I dress it all down, is a simple unwillingness to subjugate myself to God. But when I loose the love that is already in me, I experience real freedom – – like that moment in the lobby.

I was designed to love. That’s how God made me. He didn’t construct me in a way in which I can contain the love I am holding for others. That hurts me and others too much. It goes against my Divine design. And when I share the love I have in me, I get to experience the power of God’s ‘greatest of these’ gifts. The challenge is to love like that first, regardless of the circumstances, and regardless of what comes back. Simple, but not easy. The challenge is to lead in God’s currency, no matter what. It’s a powerful proposition, fueled by the Divine ability to transform single moments into magic and a lifetime into His will and not my own.

My job is to love, no matter what…like Jesus on the cross.