GUEST POST Written By Heather Windatt

God spoke to me in a profound way, late last fall, about how much He loved me. One of the pastors at my church shared a message about how God had radically changed her understanding of His love for her. At the end of her message, she invited anyone that wanted a greater understanding of God’s love to come up to the front to pray.

Having grown up in church, and in a loving home, I’ve known from the time I was a little girl that God loved me. Yet, that morning, I realized I was still missing something. So I went up to pray. There had to be more to God’s love than I was experiencing.

As I stood praying, all I could think about was my brother and his family. He and his lovely wife and their three kids live full time in the nation of Cambodia. Every two years, they come home to North America, to reconnect with family and to raise awareness and support for the ministry they are a part of. They had visited last fall and I had just said good bye to them – again – for two more years.

Having family living on the other side of the world, twelve time zones away, has not been an easy journey. While technology makes the world a little smaller and a lot easier to stay in touch, it is no substitute for the missed holiday and birthday celebrations, family births and deaths, and the every day stuff of life.

So, all of this was on my mind as I stood praying and asking God to show me more of His love. Honestly, I felt a little bit guilty and selfish thinking about how much I missed my brother instead of how much God loves me.

Finally, I had a little conversation in my heart with God that went something like this:

“God, I’m really sorry about this, I’m supposed to be thinking about Your love, but all I can think about are Jason and Angie.”

“Why don’t you ask Me your question.”

“Question? I have a question?”

Again, I heard, “Ask Me your question.”

“Okay, but You’re going to have to help me out here. I didn’t know I had one.”

As I continued to stand there praying, a question began to bubble up from a very deep place in my heart. A question I didn’t even know was there.

“Okay, God. Here’s my question. If You love me so much, the way You say You do, why do You separate me from the ones that I love the most?”

Jason and Angie have lived in Cambodia for over 10 years, and I have wrestled with this countless times. This is their dream and passion. We are not separated by a job, or by relational strife, or even by financial challenges. God has placed this dream and vision in their hearts. Why couldn’t He give then a dream and vision for Hamilton? Or even somewhere in the States? At least then, we’d be on the same continent. Yes, I’ve had an attitude about this.

How do I reconcile the fact that God loves me and at the same time creates a situation and circumstance that makes my heart ache?

God met me that morning and answered my question in a way that I never expected, and showed me He knew the cry of my hurting heart. This is what He said.

“I love you so much. Enough to allow ache in your heart over the separation from your loved ones. It is the same ache I feel when I am separated from the ones I love.”

God knows you. He created you. He’s crazy in love with you. And He can’t wait to spend time with you. He longs to spend time with you every day. His heart aches over anything that separates you from Him. So, whether you feel close to Him already, or are far away, He’s counting the days until He can spend time and life and love with you.

I know. ‘Cuz I count the days until I can spend time with my family again.

So even in the hard questions of life, I know that God loves me. Does my heart ache? Yes. But God knows and understands because His heart aches, too.

Thankfully, my story doesn’t end here. God loves me so much, He has made a way, through big miracles and small, for my daughter and I to visit Jason and Angie in Cambodia this summer.

And on the other side of the world, my precious little niece is counting down the days until she sees her auntie and her cousin again.

I am loved.

Heather Windatt
Twitter @heatherwindatt

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