Last week was Holy Week in the Christian calendar. It's the time of year I feel I ought to be most focused on Jesus' actual suffering - from the anger of the turning of the tables in the Temple, to the angst in the Garden, to the pain and agony of the crucifixion. Since I was little, I've been told that Jesus did all that out of love for all of humanity - out of love for me. It's a bit difficult, as a child, to understand the profundity of sacrificial love. I think that is because that kind of love comes much more naturally to children, or to those who have not yet been hurt by love. Children are more willing to love with reckless abandon, purely, honestly, without bias or guardedness or barriers. As an adult, having had too many experiences of being hurt by love which built many barriers around my heart, I have become too secure in the practice of withholding my love in order to avoid further heartache. This made Holy Week's focus on sacrificial love all the more difficult, as I was not only unable to envision how it felt to receive it based on my own experiences, but also how it felt to be the giver of that kind of love. It was safe to say that aside from parents or close long-time friends (from whom, in my mind, it was more expected and less of a choice), I had never experienced being the recipient of sacrificial love from a human being.

Last Monday, the Monday of Holy Week, I was scheduled to go to my doctor for a biopsy. Nothing crazy, nothing that was really concerning, but I had a slight abnormality they just wanted to check out to be safe. Unfortunately, my gift of a wild imagination did not serve me well in this case, as I began imagining all the worst-case scenarios and worrying they could, in fact, happen to me. At the peak (or valley, as it were) of my morbid imaginings, two days before the appointment, I had what could be described as a mild "freak out." My boyfriend sat me down on the couch and rubbed my back as I cried uncontrollably about the fact that I might die sometime soon. (I'm sure he was rolling his eyes when I wasn't looking. I would have been. I would have been sitting there thinking "Good LORD, this is out of control!") Thankfully, he knows that when I'm upset, all I want is for him to rub my back, listen, and tell me things are going to be okay. He executed this brilliantly and I calmed down soon enough. The day of the appointment, however, I felt my nerves climbing again. About 2 hours before I was supposed to leave my apartment, my boyfriend called to ask how I was doing. I told him, truthfully, that I was nervous but that I'd be okay, and could I call him back in a few minutes since I was on the other line with a different friend who was calming me down. He said, "Sure... or you could just open your door." And my doorbell rang. It was him. He had woken up that morning thinking about how nervous I was and decided to surprise me and take the day off work (knowing that if he had asked me I would have told him not to come) and go with me to the appointment. I was touched... overwhelmed... but most of all, relieved to be in his arms. He escorted me to the doctors office, and when they called me back, he sent me a text message that said, "Just remember I am with you." I looked at it at least a hundred times before the doctor came in.

Over the next few days, every time I'd tell someone about the overwhelming kindness he had shown me, I'd get misty-eyed and be at a loss for words. I didn't know why. Then on Good Friday, just 4 days after the appointment, I was sitting in church and it hit me: this was the first time I had experienced true sacrificial love. This other person made a huge sacrifice for me, not because he thought I wanted him to or out of a sense of obligation or guilt, but simply because he loved me and knew I needed him. He loved me without considering the consequences or whether it would be returned. I realized how much I'd been shielding myself from both giving and receiving that kind of love, which ultimately made my boyfriend's sacrifice extremely profound. And I realized that this is how Jesus loves us. With reckless abandon. Purely. Honestly. Sacrificially. Without considering the consequences, or whether his love will be returned. I realized the faulty place from which I have been operating for so long: only love people if they are guaranteed to love you back. What if Jesus had loved the world in that way? There would certainly be no Good Friday - and certainly no Easter. The thought brought tears to my eyes, and I saw Good Friday differently than I've ever seen it before.

As it turns out, when I left church and turned my cellphone back on, there was a voicemail from my doctor. She said that my biopsy results came back normal. I suppose I should have been rejoicing, but there was something inside me that knew this was the case all along. I did breathe a sigh of relief though, and over dinner that night I told my boyfriend what I had prayed about in church that day - that he had been a beautiful model to me of the kind of love that God has for us. At least, finally, I returned the favor and was able to render him speechless.