Wear Love

And over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Colossians 3:14

I used to buy them compulsively and wear them often. I think I had six or seven t-shirts, all of them with big, bold letters and bigger, bolder messages.

Instead of Reebok’s  Life is short; play hard , my Christian t-shirt said,  Life is short; pray hard . Over a cute Play-Do’ logo on a white tee, some clever, Jesus-loving marketers had written  Pray-Mo’  instead.

I was taken in by all the wordplay and by the chance to “share my faith” in such an easy manner. I was fourteen. A skinny, unsure freshman with a shirt that shouted,  Go Against the Flow!

Around my neck, I wore a delicate Jesus fish on a chain. On my wrist, I was rocking the frayed, black WWJD bracelet.

We were very concerned, in those days, with not being ashamed of our faith. It was, arguably the most poignant undercurrent of the evangelical youth culture in the 90s. If you loved God, you shouted it from the rooftops. You said it whenever you could, to whoever was around. Instead of answering the questions on your biology quiz on evolution, you wrote your faith into the blanks.

You said it, said it, said it, and if that failed, you wore it.

I wore the shirts so everyone would know that I was His and would come to me if they had questions. I wore the shirt because I believed my life was a Statement.

I think a little different about faith now. This is mostly because mine has been through the wringer, and it has come out a little stretched and crushed and different.

I never “walked away from my faith” entirely, but I held it far from my heart. I looked at it as though it were a found object that I could not make sense of. One by one, Church People had hurt me in their own unintentional ways. Bit by bit, the loneliness grew bigger and the darkness consumed.

Once upon a time, in my darkest place, I went to a coffee shop after I’d poured four vodka-cranberries overtop my depression. I was teetering drunk and sobbing and messy.

The boy who worked there did not wear a Christian shirt or a cross or a WWJD bracelet, but he came out from behind his post at the counter. He brought me dark-roast, and he sat with me while I drank it.

He didn’t say much, just listened, but when I asked him if he went to church, he nodded. When I asked why, he shrugged. “Sometimes people suck,” he said. “But sometimes, they get it. Sometimes they love you without a thought.”

And here is what I want to say to you about all this: a hurting world does not care who you are until you love them.

True love, life-changing, agape love, does not try to draw attention to itself, even for the most noble of reasons. It looks, instead, for the pain and goes to it. It is aware of the lonely person, the hurting person, the one who is trying so hard to pretend that she’s not about to fall apart.

The Message is not something you can print on a t-shirt; it’s something you communicate in your smallest actions. It’s not a statement you are making, but a dialogue in which you are fully engaged.

Eventually, it will all come out on its own. In some cases it will happen quickly; in others, it will take a while. The flame inside of you dances and glows, and we are, all of us, drawn to the Light.

In the end, it isn’t about the clothes or the necklaces or the accessories or the words. We prove that we are “not ashamed of the Gospel” not by wearing it emblazoned on a shirt, but by living it out. By taking that seat that no one else will sit in. By loving with reckless, beautiful grace.

Addie Zierman is a writer, mom and Diet Coke enthusiast. She blogs at  How To Talk Evangelical , re-imagining faith one tired cliche at a time. You can also keep up with her on Twitter at  @addiezierman .