We are all just lovers.

Tonight is my very first night watch, meaning that I get to stay up all night long, pacing the halls and checking beds every 15 minutes. Oh how I've loathed Red Bull (or any energy drink for that matter) for as long as I can remember... but, tonight Red Bull may become my new best friend since my eyes are telling me that they would love to stay shut for a very long time, since I've been awake since six yesterday morning! 7 hours of free time in the middle of the night bears a lot of room for thought since the sound of silence surrounds me. It is nice to experience some peace and quiet for once and some time to process life in a group home full of wonderfully emotional teenage girls.  Ironically, in the midst of this stark silence, I can't get a song out of my head! oh, how I love Portugal. The Man!:)  On their album The Majestic Majesty, and song, The Sun, they sing, "We are all just lovers... Born of earth and light like all these others."  This song is something/an idea I've been thinking about/processing for a few weeks now...
     We are all just lovers. We are all searching for it in some capacity- we all want it and we all want to give it (to some extent). We are all looking for that deep soul connection that will bond us to another for life, whether that be through a loved one, a kindred spirit of a true friend or through a romantic companion. We all want it, because we were born for it. We were born to love. We were born to be loved.  Everyone knows it to to be true to some degree.
    Living in a house of 19 sad, angry and broken teenage girls makes you realize how very relevant and true this living statement is. Most teenage girls' hormones are heightened between ages 13 to 18 -and if you put a bunch of them together, you will be given: emotions. Lots of them. All the time. It's nuts.
     Every single girl is here because they desire to be loved and admired/accepted by someone. Anyone! Most of the time, they are here because they have experienced a lack of parental love that they know they were made for, and even if they don't consciously know that they were made for it, they are subconsciously acting out through destructive and unhealthy patterns, because they were made for it. 
     The truth is... that we are already so loved. Every single one of us, whether we like it or believe in it or not, we have been loved and pursued by a loving and relentless God since before we were in our mother's womb. He calls us His Beloved and He calls us to walk and live in His love. Yet, most of us (including myself), don't fully understand this love that is constantly being offered to us, because it seems like its too good to be true. It's hard to understand when traumatic things happen to us, or to those who are around us, that there could be such a thing as true love. Yet, I'm pretty sure that once we are able to understand the concepts of true love and grace, most of us will go on living our lives so much differently than before because by accepting His love, we are accepting His sufficient grace. Once we are able to accept the fact that we are His beloved, He gives us the world to bless. So, yes, I do believe and love the fact that We are all just lovers in one way or another. My current issue or charge is to the girls of Shelterwood, and what I must continue to remember is that I have been placed as a shepherd in to the lives of these girls, and they need to be loved just as much as I do. I am to love them with the same love that I have been loved with. My hope and prayer for these girls is that they too can see that...
We are all just lovers.
-and my shift is almost over. Amen.