Deeply Loved
Written by Zoe Langa
A question everyone should ask themselves is this: ‘What does my heart truly desire?’
If you know anything about me, you would know that I love personality tests. Myers Briggs, Enneagram, StrengthsFinders, love languages; I have done all of these and thoroughly enjoyed them. But here's the thing: I don't froth for them for the mere sake of knowing whether I am an introvert or extrovert, or so that I can have a conversation-starter in a social setting. No. Fundamental to the way I am wired, is that I desire, deeply, to know people deeply. Likewise, I desire, deeply, to be known deeply.
The thing though, is that I did not know this about myself until the last two or so years. Which meant that my first three years of living in Cape Town were filled with me asking myself questions like: ‘Why am I struggling so much to form real friendships with people, while everyone else seems to have found their people?’ and ‘Why do I have so many good acquaintances, but no one I can call on a random Saturday to just hang out with, without feeling like I'd be burdening them?’. Even in highschool, with years of friendship with my close-knit friend group, girls who I adored, I still felt that something wasn't fully right, because I didn't feel deeply known. I mentioned StrengthsFinders as one of the personality tests I have done. Something insightful that it shows you is your 'core' strength. This is the strength - or personality trait - that informs all your other strengths or personality traits. Mine is one called ‘relator’. All it means is that I thrive off of close, deep relationships with a few people. As such, I describe myself as a close-circle girlie; if you are not in the circle, it is an uphill battle to scale its walls, but once you are in, you are in. And this is why I struggled for so long to find my people; I needed to surrender my quest to find life-giving, heart-filling friendships to the One who knows and loves me fully.
It turns out that the kind of friendships God wired me for is the kind experienced by Jonathan and David, described as Jonathan's soul being "knit to the soul of David" and Jonathan loving David "as his own soul" (1 Samuel 18:1 ESV). Once I entrusted myself to Him, I discovered that my desire for strong relationships paled in comparison to His desire for me to have strong relationships. The basis for this is one of the most beautiful truths about God; that He eternally exists in a loving, delightful relationship with Himself. Father, Son and Spirit - for eternity, they have enjoyed perfect friendship with each other. And thus, having been made in His image, His design for me was to experience a parallel of that. And that has come in the form of Christ-centred friendships. Having the God who fully knows and fully loves me as the cornerstone of my friendships has meant the fruition of my heart's desire to experience the beauty of being fully known and yet also fully loved in my friendships. And I know that I am still scratching the surface of the depths of relational glory that He has in store for me. And I am so keen!
So, to answer the question I posed at the beginning; for me, the words from the late Tim Keller have never rang more true: ‘To be loved and not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.’
