First Love, A Refreshing Renewal

Many can remember their first crush, the first look upon "The One", or the first time they experienced the rush that comes with following your passion and doing whatever it is that moves you so deeply.  In church, we talk about a person's conversion experience and the giddy, clean afterglow as "First Love".

Sometimes, the days, years, LIFE go by and we look back to reminisce, "Whatever happened to my First Love for this.....?"   In the Bible, *in Revelation, it talks about the seven churches. The one that has always struck me is Ephesus.  They have all the right programs, ministry, songs, outreach, services.... but God has ought with them because they have grown lukewarm. They have lost the luster of First Love. (see footnote)

In my own life, I see many times this concept comes to play. My first love of reading, writing, learning. The first time I held a virgin baseball in my hand and fit my fingers around the stitches. The first time I stood on a stage or pulled up to a radio mike and passionately read my own writings for others.  My first glimpse of Brian in 7th grade.  The first time I put my trombone together, sprayed the slide, and buzzed a note. My first day  teaching in front of a classroom of kindergarteners eager to learn and play.

Funny, of all the people in and out of my life, only a handful stand out in the "First Love Wall of Fame". People that you know in that very instant that LIFE has just tilted on its axis and is spinning at hypersonic speeds. God has given you a gift, a chance, and the new person Journeys with you for minutes, or days, or years. When the time has come to go seperate ways, you have a heart full of memories and shared moments.

In the transportation field, my first time kick starting a motorcycle, rolling the throttle, or pushing the clutch and turning the key to a car, or as a commercial truck driver, the initial releasing of the brakes to begin to roll 18 wheels in harmonious motion stand out appropriately as milestones.  So does my first mountain descent, ice storm, view of the four changing seasons, and that new smell of a vehicle with 2 miles on the odometer.

Just this past weekend, though, I had the gift of taking a friend to church with me for his first visit to my local congregation.  His reaction reminded me of my driving students when I would take them to services across the USA.  One student, Vickie, made it inside the doors of the Granite Falls, Illinois  sanctuary only to lock her knees and freeze in the very back of the room.   I returned to guide her to a seat. Later, over dinner she told me she had been hit with a "wall of such love" and that moment she froze, she was telling herself over and over again, "breathe, Vickie! Don't pass out!  Breathe! C'mon, BREATHE!" During the weeks she rode with me in my semi, it became a common sight to see the glow of her flashlight, under the covers on the top bunk as she pored over the Bible I gave her.

It always made me have a catch in my heartbeat to wonder when did I lose my own first fervor? How long had it been since I was THAT hungry and thirsty to spend my every moment with the God I profess to love more than anything? Every time I took a new person, this lesson pressed in on me and stirred my passions anew. But then.... time passed. Life took a course change. Stuff happens. I have a habit of tucking and rolling with the flow that gets me through the hard times in Life. When I am honest with myself, tucking and rolling becomes such a normal response? I find myself complacent, immune, and just getting by day by day. 

I choose to be a dynamic person!  I choose LIFE abundantly!  I choose passion and fire in my every day interactions and efforts!

I give a thank you to my friend from this weekend. What a gift to later  be able to talk about shared experiences and to see the same room, same sounds, same people through very different perspectives.  The newcomers first blush of excitement, awe, and to see them a tad bit overwhelmed as they process all the sensory offerings of a vibrant, loving Pentecostal experience. When I am tenderized again, I look out to see how it must appear to someone new.

I also remember a similar moment of such awe and wonder. In a funny way, the comparison makes me laugh a bit extra. I grew up going with my Mom and brother to Lakeland, FL to watch Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus arrive on the train at the Lakeland Civic Center. Then we would go get lunch, and take in the first show under the Big Top, watching Gunther Gaebel Williams and the the wild cats!!!  For me, it was a gimme, my own children would have these opportunities as well.

Angel was 7 years old, Alisha was 4 years old. We bought our tickets, went inside, the kids skipping in anticipation at the drama a circus presence brings.

I will never, EVER forget,,, NEVER FORGET..... looking to my right to the seat next to me and seeing the "W-O-W", open-jawed WONDER and glisten in my four year old daughter's eyes.  She was not moving. She was not speaking words.  Her gaze was open and directed to the three rings of color, sounds, glitz and glamor.  It has been over 18 years since that moment, and even as I type the story here, tears well up in my eyes and the love, and onslaught of powerful AWE swells in my chest and I remember that moment of Ahhhhhh....  with my girls.

I do not compare a  visit to church with a trip to the circus, lol. But my friend's facial expression, the stillness in his frame, and his WOW this past weekend as he stood next to me as a visitor to a church that I attend 104 + times a year, every year..... Again, as I type to tell my views of that moment, tears clump in my  heart, throat, and eyes.

While I love sharing these moments of WONDER and newness with friends and family?

I ask myself, why do I not have this same AWE each and every time, especially in church? Especially in God's presence, as I seek Him in prayer and meditation? Where is my own FIRST LOVE and why have I waxxed complacent or  find myself taking God for granted? Why don't I have more questions, more answers, more desire today than ever before???

What a wonderful gift to see "First Love" again!  What a challenge to me to dust off the hamper of Life stuff, and to return to that perpetual place of "can't get enough of God" and all the fullness thereof.  For myself, I want to return to innocent trust in God and unadulterated adoration. I want to see the world, the people, the situations, the prayer opportunities through new, first timers eyes.

I want to be in AWE with God and Life again.

Refreshed,
Jan M. Olsen
~J~

* referenced above:

King James Version (KJV)

Revelation 2
¹Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks;

²I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars:

³And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted.

⁴Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.