This weekend I picked up “Redeeming Love” by Francine Rivers. Though this book was published when I must have been about 10 years old, I got a chance to lay my hands on it only after about 18 years.

I was not sure if a weekend would be enough to finish the book. It is quite a bulky book. I began to read it anyway. From the time I read, I couldn’t put it down. I took breaks in between to lunch, to drink water, to go to the rest room and that’s all, all day I read and read and read. After about 12 hrs, I had finished reading the book.

It is one of those books that change something in me, that inspire and heal me. I remember reading The Shack last year. Last year it was about healing in my relationship with my father and knowing God as my father. And this year it is about healing of broken heart and knowing God as my lover.

I saw my self in the characters that I read about. Like, Sarah, the heroine of the story I too had this deep engraved lesson that said, ‘you have to pay a cost for everything’. Though I pretended to be a changed person, deep down I still believed in that lesson that I learnt the cruelest way. I always doubt people’s kindness. And I hate taking a favor without paying it back. That way I never understood God’s unconditional love and grace for me. And I despised genuine love and concern from others.

In school I had a best friend. We studied together from class 2 to class 7. Once, I think when we were in class 6, I lost my sketch pens. They were precious to me as my parents wouldn’t buy for me another set. The next day, I saw my best friend using my sketch pens, exactly the colors that I had lost. She didn’t even have the rest of the set, if she owned one. I didn’t worry for my loss much. What hurt me most was that it was my best friend, whom I loved and to whom I would easily give anything if she asked me. It was clear to me that she didn’t love me. We remained friends but the lesson stuck to me. And my conviction became stronger later when I grew up. Time and again I felt used, betrayed, and unloved. And as I read about Sarah, I realized how similar my feelings were. I never believed I was loved for who I am – it was always for selfish, self-centric reasons. The most shocking truth was that deep, deep-down I still felt the same way in every relationship – with my parents, siblings, friends and with love interests – when they were there. Now that it was crystal clear to me, I had no choice but to give all my baggage to God and to ask for freedom of my soul.

From the time I developed a personal relationship with God, I knew that there is nothing else, no one else that can satisfy and fill us the way God does. At least I knew it theoretically. But when I finished reading ‘Redeeming Love’ I actually understood its nature/color/form. And I think I did experience the next day when I was talking to God in a cool evening. I will never be able to explain or share about that experience and that moment. It is sacred. All I can say is that I knew I was loved with never failing, everlasting, passionate, jealous love.