God loves me! God loves me!

It's been a looong, drawn out week. Because of my own stupidity and procrastination skills, this week was filled with little sleep, bits of irritation and in the midst of that, wonderful blessings of needed reminders.

The first one came from this goofball here. He's one of my newer students that just recently started but he loves to be loved and is just a great joy to have in class. Some of the conversations that he and I have are quite humorous to me (as most convos in my class are..). This is the kid that when I tell the class to clean up, he walks around with an armful of toys and tells me the name of every OTHER student who isn't cleaning up. He also has a tendency to "creep" around me. He'll come just close enough to be outside my reach and often won't say anything to me, he'll just watch and wait for me to acknowledge him.
So on Thursday, I noticed him "creeping" and I called him over to me. He comes over and just falls into my lap in a half hug, and I tell him that I love him. He speaks decent English but is still limited in how much he really understands, so he just kind of looks at me blankly. So I ask him, if he knows that I love him and he answers, "huh?" So in Chinese, I ask him the same question again and his face lights up with a big smile and in Chinese he answers back, "I love you!" Then he runs off to go play with a giant smile on his face. The best part of this was that a few minutes later I overheard him telling some of the other kids "I love you" in Chinese with a big smile. I'm not sure that any of them actually responded to him at all, but it didn't damper his enthusiasm at all. It put a smile on my face.

The other moment came on Friday with this beautiful joy. I had her in my class last year and we formed quite a bond. She too, LOVES to cuddle and just love and be loved. I walked into her classroom Friday to get some materials and she ran up to give me a hug, which is normal. So I picked her up and started hugging and kissing her and telling her how much I loved her and she just melted in laughter and happiness. Then I moved on to get my stuff. As I turned to walk back out, I see her skipping around the room in pure joy saying, "Raychel loves me! Raychel loves me!" and my heart melted. I really do.

Last weekend I heard a message that reminded me that God loves me. 
What a concept....GOD. LOVES. ME. 
And I was struck by how mild my response to that love typically is. I mean, really?? How amazing is it that God, GOD, loves me? It's incredible! And so each morning this week, I've been reminding myself of this truth: that God loves me. It doesn't matter what I've done or haven't done. It doesn't matter what other people think about my faults and failures. It doesn't even matter how inadequate I feel in this life that I live. None of it matters. Because it's God's love for me that gives me worth, NOT my love for God.
I'll say that again. 

It's God's love for me that gives me worth and value, NOT my love for God. 

Both of these moments with these kids this week reminded me of the joy that we should have in realizing God's love for us. How often do we go prancing around telling people in excitement about God's love for us? 
While I was still a sinner, Christ chose to die for me and there is absolutely NOTHING that can separate me from His love in Christ Jesus. I'm thankful for the reminders that He gives to remind me how much He loves.