I’ve mentioned before how I had to be dragged kicking and screaming from the idea that God wanted some nebulous good for the Kingdom (and I could be spent like loose change whenever God wanted to, if the payoff was good enough.) At some point, I started getting nudges that God loved me.
But not in that intellectual, “God loves me, all is good” kind of way, but rather, “I would run through fire to be with you. I wait by the phone hoping you’ll call. When the mail comes, I’m disappointed if there isn’t a letter from you. I stalk your Twitter account to see what you’ve been up to. When I’m at the grocery store, I see the Ritter Sport marzipans in the candy aisle and I buy a package to leave on your desk so you’ll find them in the morning.”
Meanwhile, I kept saying to my guardian angel, “But it’s easier to talk to you than to God because I know you’re on my side, whereas God’s on everyone’s side.”
Which probably sent the poor angel over to the fainting couch. Really, I needed a good old whap with the Skillet of Duh.
It took a while even with the skillet (my head makes a nice “DONG!” sound when it’s struck just the right way, btw. The angel wields a mean skillet when necessary, and every so often I imagine demons standing around in Hell with a reverse imprint of HUD on their foreheads, saying, “Got you too, huh?”)
After that, I was praying and thought I heard that of course Jesus loved me — he’d died for me. I thought back, He died for everyone. And then the reply: if you’d been the only one, he’d have died for you anyhow.
As a writer, I know that if you push me hard enough to talk about my characters, eventually I’ll blurt out, “I love him” or “I love her.” At the core of each of my characters there’s something funny or awesome or sweet that makes me feel close to my character, and I want to share that with the world. Even the villians. And it makes sense because if I loathed the character, I wouldn’t have created it in the first place.
I love them. I want to spend time with them. That makes you want to spend time with them too. It makes them realer.
At any rate, I’m convinced now that Heaven has a romance section bigger than the Harlequin catalog, and each story is the story of how God and a specific soul came to meet one another, how the human got to know God, and how God blossomed a unique relationship with that person.
I do see God as an author. But that had gotten in the way of seeing God as very much in love with me, because sometimes as an author, I do have to sacrifice one character to forward the story in its entirety.
I’ve been trying to think of a response to this post for a few days. I even wrote my own blog post about it, but I don’t think I’ll publish it, because that would be like publishing my boyfriend’s love letters.
Seven angels, four kids, one family 
Again, very much like parenthood, but with a parent who’s better at multi-tasking than we are.
I love this post. With me it was not a skillet of Duh. It was a 2 by 4, right between the eyes.
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I’ve been trying to think of a response to this post for a few days. I even wrote my own blog post about it, but I don’t think I’ll publish it, because that would be like publishing my boyfriend’s love letters.
So, I’ll just say thank you.