yeah. so, service doesn't mean you love someone. if you do love someone, you will serve them, but serving doesn't equal love. this may sound normal and easy for you as you read this, but remember, this is coming from a guy who felt his first emotion that wasn't pain or fear a few weeks back. read a few posts back for an explanation.

i saw people who did love people and i did see them serve people. so, i copied them. i never felt, but i knew serving people got a reaction i liked and i wanted the attention. realizing that every good action i ever did was to serve myself, that it was either because i wanted something or i weighed myself down with requirements that i thought god has on me, that i had to earn his smile. i have never had my father smile at me, i have never have him be proud of me. i haven't had a father. realizing that God loves me is one thing, but realizing that love means he wants to serve me, but not just do things to provide for my needs, but EVERYTHING. He wants to know me and be intimate with me. He wants to save me...and has. He wants me to have emotions, he wants me to be able to love, he wants me to be able to live and thrive. He wants me to have joy and happiness.

Loving someone means being vulnerable, but also it means that the simply things, the building relationship through talking, sharing, enduring, laughing, all those things, they're in there, too. I am still confused by all this emotion stuff, but i do know i had my first good day a few weeks ago and it is beginning to show. i saw an old friend today and her response was, without hearing any of what has been going on, " for the first time, you don't look sad." i am learning how to express emotions on top of that. it took me feeling the joy of jesus in me and his healing to do that, but man, it's scary.

another thing, today for the first time ( i am having a lot of firsts in this part of my life) a person i look up to told me that were proud of me. it's strange. it almost doesn't register. something to pray about. what is it that God is proud of us? i have been focusing on how God pays for our guilt and shame, but more than just taking care of our shame, he is proud of us. He smiles on us. so, with that said, how do you and i live lives that demonstrate that God, the creator, our father, is proud of us?

gal 3:13 ( a possible future tattoo) jesus redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse.

everything we are, he took care of and gave us everything he was and is. that is a radical idea.