He is I Am - Part I

Sometimes I call out Your name
But I cannot find You.
I look for Your face,
But You are not there.
By my sorrows, Lord,
Lift me to You,
Lift me to Your side.

Lord of Eternity,
Father of mercy,
Look on my fainting soul.
Keeper of all the stars,
Friend of the poorest heart
Touch me and make me whole.

~Fernando Ortega lyrics, Lord of Eternity
_________________________

It feels surreal.

I feel surreal.

My life is happening to me, around me. I have wept. I have laughed. I have been afraid. Excitement is building and crashing, rising and falling.

In the years since I loved and lost, I have not experienced this wild, uncontrollable sensation of pitching headlong forward in hope. I find I have not missed the feeling.

My survival instinct is retching, choking. It does not approve of the fall I am choosing. "You don't know if this is going to work!" My mind screams at me. "He's already let you down! You can't be serious!"

But I can't stay.

My heart found its way through a crack in the wall around it. Light had been glimmering there for a while; I neglected to repair it.

He kept telling me He loves me. I want Him to love me. But I want Him to love ME. No desires stripped. No death to dreams, just so I could be in His presence. No sacrifice, surrender, no loss.

I wrote a beginning for an article that won't be published:

The other night I found myself in my daughter’s nursery, scooping her from her crib, not caring if she woke from her all-too-rare sleep. I needed to hold her. Bathed in the gentle glow of the nightlight we keep in her room, I rocked and wept, raining her with gentle kisses, trying to pray, trying to somehow gain from God a guarantee that He could keep the pain away and be enough for me.

People had died. I couldn't ask that. He let them die. He lets life happen here. We chose it.

Conversations raised questions: "This is the God I know," I said of a kind, loving God who likes us. "This is the God who let my dad die." Oh. He did, didn't He.

I wrote about gentleness. He said, "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." (Mt. 11:28-30, NKJV)

It's not easy, I screamed. You're not gentle. You want to destroy me because You want me to desire only You. Nothing changed. He did nothing to make it change. I'm heavy laden, and You don't care.

My heart broke; I didn't care. I railed at Him. I wanted to feel nothing.

My heart slipped free. It wanted to fly.

I don't enjoy free-falling.

What does He want?

"Your love."

I remembered. I remembered laughter. I remembered joy. I remembered spinning in the rain. I sang. I dreamed. The impossible was His. I lost then too. Surrender and sacrifice and asceticism were theological words for suicide and sepulchers.

I remembered I was His then. All of me. The pain, the joy, the hopes, the dreams.

I still am His.

The world is not His weapon. It is His creation. I am not His enemy. I am His creation. My friend capitalizes Life. I know why. He is alive, so I live. He is always alive. He has always been.

He is I AM.

He is eternal. He transcends time. He is infinite.

He is my portion. My heart won't be imprisoned again. It knows the Truth. It knows Life.