Daybreak: I Recognize Desire

For background to this post, you may want to read Friday's post, Trusting Love: A God-ramble from a Broken Heart

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I didn't always doubt love.

Once, I trusted easily. Too easily, it seemed.

That was before God let my heart break...

He let it break like a wave on the shore, leaving sand and shells and foam and litter behind to fall back into the sea and break again against Him, tide flowing in and out, a restless broken heart always seeking rest, never still until He stills me.

By the time I finished, the realization that I'm still aching for His love - in spite of everything I've been through with Him! - left me bemused, disillusioned.

I think I should have noted that I have been here before; I am always here again, because I do not do the things I want to do, and the things I don't want to do, I do.

I assume that even His "yes" will eventually become "no," so even the good gets rejected, and I am afraid to accept what He gives. The bad lesson pain too often teaches.

My surface-grievance is become habit, and I ramble and bumble my way through feelings and theology and what-I-know-that-I-know. I share the scribbled questions without resolution.

Faith doesn't require my answer - but I look anyway.

I ran across this last week, and wondered if God was trying to convict.

There I was minding my own business, relishing some bitterness about my grandmother, and the Holy Spirit broke into my thoughts with an unusual assertion... that I was being an idolater, putting myself up on a pedestal in an act of self-worship over and against my grandmother.
- L.L. Barkat, excerpt from an interview at Holy Experience

Nothing moved in my spirit. Just a still and quiet "wait."

A friend left this in her comment on Friday's God-ramble. Surely, this must be His confirmation of conviction.

One of the most telling Scriptures in support of this fact is "You shall have no other gods before me." If I say, "God, I can't be happy without such-and-such," I am essentially telling Him there is something I want more than Him.

- Excerpt from Christy's comment

Again, I looked inward, searching, asking God to search. But no. Still the quiet, "wait."

"What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead."

- Phil. 3:8-11

I read, and reread, and something soft and real and alive with joy pinged in my heart, ringing like a clear bell through the too-familiar clamor of the questions. Something that had nothing to do with "He gives and takes away" and everything to do with "blessed be the name of the Lord."

A year ago, I didn't want Him at all. Oh, I had no choice but to believe He was there, being God. Some things just are; He is one of those undeniables.

But I. couldn't. choose. Him.

My reasons were many: perhaps then it entailed some of the idolatry detailed above; perhaps it was my humanity, sin striving against Spirit for an assumed right.

Thus my heart was grieved,
And I was vexed in my mind.
I was so foolish and ignorant;
I was like a beast before You.
Nevertheless I am continually with You;
You hold me by my right hand.
You will guide me with Your counsel,
And afterward receive me to glory.

- Ps. 73:21-24

I tried to push Him away. He was too much for me, for my heart. His kindness seemed only to hurt me more. He could not be my greatest treasure, the object of my desire.

Do you remember how Hezekiah laid his enemy's letter out before the Lord? Sometimes, I have to do this with the questions, with my feelings, say "this is what is here, God. I can't figure it out."

In Jesus, "sin shall not have dominion over [me], for [I am] not under law but under grace." (Rom. 6:14) As I acknowledge His Life in me, I know I have done - and can do - nothing to earn this grace to doubt and fail. I lay me out in front of Him, and sometimes in front of the world, embarrassed at my humanity, my foolishness, my easy disillusionment.

Finally, on the heels of the wait comes a phrase from a prayer, a quote mixed up in the whisper of desire... "how high, how wide... the love of Christ."

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

- Eph. 3:14-19

He is not holding out on me as I have feared. He is granting me Spirit-strengthening. Love-grounding. The questions I have shared are the beginning of comprehension - of width and length and depth and height - the beginning of knowledge of the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge...

And the ping of joy ringing in my heart?

I actually want to know it. To know Him. To be filled with it - all the fullness of God.

Somewhere in the struggle - or in pushing the struggle away and being still and letting Him be God - my desire has changed. Somewhere in my quest for relationship with Him, He has become the object of that desire. Knowing Him means finding a Person at the end of my questions, learning to trust His heart instead of my experience-concepts of the God of the universe.

It is the most surprising thing to me, this awakening realization of desire. I no longer own a "want-to-want Him." I almost don't want to want Him, because it leaves me so vulnerable. But like a woman who has fallen in love, I just know He's the One who is meant to hold my heart.

And here I am, being invited into His.

I think He expects to take my breath away.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Trusting Love: A God-Ramble from a Broken Heart

I didn't always doubt love.

Once, I trusted easily. Too easily, it seemed.

That was before God let my heart break, before I knew the reality of loss, that choking, heart-wrenching physical pain of chosen vulnerability shattered, crushed, left for dead.

That was before I learned about God's sovereignty, His uncompromising, inevitable comforting ways that are higher than mine.

The story is not an easy one to tell. I was younger then, not so cynical as I am now. I don't want to think of myself as cynical, but I know that I am. Back then, it was a chosen cynicism, confirmed through minor experience that turned out to be my own misunderstanding of the situation. Now, praying for exceptions to what has become the rule of my experience yields little but disappointment.

Tuesday's post surprised me as I was writing it. When I began writing, I thought I was just frustrated with God for being God again. By the time I finished, the realization that I'm still aching for His love - in spite of everything I've been through with Him! - left me bemused, disillusioned.

I'm embarrassed to admit it. Embarrassed that He still looks like you-didn't-bring-K-back to me, embarrassed that He still seems only like God-who-takes-away to me, embarrassed to admit my non-thankfulness because I don't trust His giving. I half-laugh at my concept of Him - "God, the Indian Giver."

Pain changes things. Not always for the better; not always for the worse. My initial suffering (my health problems, work issues, dropping out of school) was minor compared to the soul-questions I have asked - no, screamed at - the God of the universe. See, I get that He is that. The God of the universe. That He is I Am. That He is higher than I.

What I don't understand in the deep of me is His care for me. I don't understand that from anyone. Not after once accepting, believing, trusting it, and having it crushed by the very person who once offered it.

I know God is not a man. I know God is Love itself - Himself.

I was good at Geometry. I loved having the solutions to my problems pre-defined. Just plug in the right postulate (this is this, then this must be that, now that must be this) and you can understand the problem. Similarly, there is much about God I can accept as fact, build a doctrine, craft my system of belief.

But in relationship with Him, the postulates only go so far. Because relationships are not pre-defined. They are not solution-driven. They are often a morass of miscommunications, misunderstandings, misconceptions - and emotions gone haywire over much of the above. Since my heart broke, simply "doing the right thing" when it comes to God has become nearly impossible.

I wonder if I have enough faith; then I wonder if the faith I have is misplaced. Is faith for something like moving mountains, or in Someone, the Person of Jesus Christ? And what does having faith in Him mean for accepting love in relationship with God?

Sometimes, I think if I just made up my mind to believe it, it would become real to me. But I know from long experience - that's not the way it works for me. I'm not really sure it's the way it works for God:

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (Jn. 1:12-13)

You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. (Jn. 15:16)

The Psalmist speaks often of waiting on the Lord. I can make up my mind about what I'm going to do in regard to Him, ask Him for help, and wait for His response - if it doesn't come in my time, does that mean He has abandoned me, does it mean He doesn't love me or care about me? I don't believe it does - I clutch at His faithful, knowing He is stronger than I, that for all my struggle to comprehend faith that is solid evidence of the unseen, He yet holds my heart in His hand.

I am so afraid He will allow it to be broken again, and I know I do not yet comprehend His perfect love that casts out fear.

I fear God. I reverence and often rejoice in His higher ways, His immutability, His God-prerogative. Yet, this holy fear often caves to very human fear, the kind that has me hunkered into my corner trying to protect myself from being hurt again by Him, by others.

I am so out of control. I have often heard that trust is a command, but I wonder perhaps if it isn't more of a plea: "Trust Me. I am so good, if you will just believe Me..." He is not so helpless - He could force His hand, MAKE me trust Him. Just like He could MAKE my life go perfectly as I wish.

In both cases, though, relationship would be broken. In the first, His will would dominate and destroy - where my transformation through deeper knowledge of Him would serve better to strengthen mutual love. In the latter, my wishes would control, and God who is I Am would be subject to the whims of someone who doesn't see what He sees, no matter how much foresight the fruit from that tree gave to me. There would be no unity of thought, no oneness, no submission that fosters trust.

The strongest faith, I believe, is faith that does stand in the face of my why, that is solid in spite of my fears, faith that carries my heart beyond my shattered conception of God into the reality of Him and His real love. Twila Paris sings, "This is the faith, patience to wait when there is nothing clear..."

Wait when I decide to listen and He doesn't say anything. Wait when I ask Him for help and make up my mind to do better and fail miserably. Wait when His love for me doesn't appear to be the love I want.

Piper doesn't trust us for the "no" yet. Oh, when she's scared and wants to cuddle, she's all over us. But when we tell her "no" she doesn't yet understand that we have reasons we can't explain for our "no." She can't see what we see, hasn't seen what we've seen. She breaks relationship with her "stop eet, stop eet, stoppp eet!!!" and runs to hide from us.

She looks a lot like me relating to God sometimes.

Only I assume that even His "yes" will eventually become "no," so even the good gets rejected, and I am afraid to accept what He gives. The bad lesson pain too often teaches.

Years ago, when I chose to love at God's request and direction, I stepped out believing that God was capable of completely healing my heart, even if He never fulfilled all my wishes.

I would ask why the healing takes so long. I know the answer lies in His care for me.

He is incredibly patient, isn't He?

I learned this week that autumn leaves don't simply fall off trees. The trees must actually throw the leaves off, for the risk of blooming too soon and being killed during a warm winter spell would be too great if they remained.

He knows when my time to bloom will be. He knows how much of Him I can handle now, what must be shed from my soul for me to rest in His love.

This is what trust is about, I think; living as He created me to live, believing He will do what is best to sustain the life I now live in the flesh by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

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*This photo of mine got featured over at High Calling Blogs today! So exciting!
*Need an earlyish Christmas idea? Check out these images for prints - available for a limited time only!





(Image © SXC)

Authentic Virtue - A "Becoming"

Part IV of my authentic relationship series.

Part I - The Fact Is, I am Eve Too.
Part II - Owning Truth - From Romantic to Real
Part III - Nothing Hidden - The Breaking

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“God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” (Num. 23:19)

Sometimes, I think of my passage from my first love into God’s love as a becoming. It is as if I did not exist – until I did, until He made me, until His Truth was such a part of me I couldn’t be anything else. No illusion I create for myself can survive His own authentic immutability. God is who He is, and He is God.

My marriage, broken early at His altar because of my Eve-dust, is more real now than I imagined it could be. My love for my husband is not fantasy, patched and stitched and created and recreated to fit my ideals. When I share with Pete, I share myself. I learn not to excuse myself, justify myself.

Though Pete is amused at my self-struggles at times, he loves me gently, trusting the work of God in both of us, choosing trust instead of judgment and wife-improvement. But I am not responsible for his response to me, amazing as it has been. Always, I am reminded that what grace he has for me is given him by the Lord. It is not something I can expect or demand, because it is between Him and God.

It is instead my own response that draws my focus. I can’t present an illusion of me to Pete. Living real with a person removes blinders; he knows me as no one but God knows me. My own blinders are gone. He could reject my heart at any moment; he will fail to lay his life down for me at times; he will inevitably hurt me. This is my cross, the becoming one of my marriage that opens me, gives my whole naked self into Love that already laid down His life for me, Love that walked vulnerable to be crucified so that I might have Life.

I offer him myself and I find grace for him, and love that offers itself in spite of me. And while I face and despise my weaknesses, I know that I would not be anyone else, daughter of Eve that I am. My real has become God, the unchangeable One who is always “I Am.”

“The heart of her husband safely trusts her…”

When my desire to have control of my life fell out and I had no choice but to collapse into mercy, I realized that the virtuous woman of Proverbs was not virtuous because of her many fine qualities. She was virtuous because she feared the Lord in her heart, and He spilled out of her heart in everything she did. She had become. Her husband was unafraid of her secrets, for he knew the God who moved her had promised him “good and not evil all the days” of his life.

I want to walk before God-who-is-Real with fear that is holy and unterrified. I want a pure heart - to be poured out at His feet holding only unkept secrets to share. I want to answer His “how far will you go with me” with ever-deepening intimacy, shedding my fear of vulnerability into Christ-grace.

As the “enter” bell tingles over that coffee-shop door, I gather my courage and listen.

As I have pondered my friends’ stories, I've tried to imagine myself in their places. I wonder what heart-cry led to their choices, what unanswered questions they wanted satisfied. I read their words and see their hearts, broken and healed, taking measures and setting boundaries, yet unsure at times of their new identities, forgiven, covered in Christ.

I learn from them, embrace the grace of which they speak, understanding they know it deeply. They share their failures to love, and I learn to ask for freedom to love without constraint. They share their attempts to find intimacy in secrets, and I learn to ask for intimacy that may share without fear or shame, and for trust that is built on Truth that is a Person.

I hope that my far is far enough to go with them embracing their authenticity with my own vulnerability, hoping they won't reject me because my story is "less" or different.

I know in Jesus, this Eve can find relationship naked and unashamed, with my dust and sin and instinctual desire for control covered by His righteousness as patience has its wait-work in my heart for Spirit change. I am only just learning to receive and offer the grace I have been given, learning that I can answer the “how far will you go” in the knowledge that God has loved me, and really, that is why we love anyway.

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This will be the last "official" post in this series from my unpublished article on authentic relationship. The comments I have received have started some lines of thought I'd like to pursue at some point (perhaps some more on the expectations we had of marriage, and a bit more of what happened in my heart prior to my relationship with Pete). There is so much more I could write, so much more to tell, and the time will come, I know. For now, though, I'm needing to step back and take some time to breathe through the remains of my photography processing.

Related Posts from the Past (for your enjoyment, and a little more of the story):
What is Marriage, Anyway?
Some Wedding Rememberies
Vows
Choosing Canaan
Pete Is a Thief, You Know





(Image © Informal Moments Photography) (credit: Gabe Waddell)

Nothing Hidden - The Breaking

Part III of my authentic relationship series.

Part I - The Fact Is, I am Eve Too.
Part II - Owning Truth - From Romantic to Real

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Two days before our wedding, I realized the path I was on. Perhaps I'd have realized it sooner if things had been easier, if we had talked more, if we hadn't had nine months of unbelievable, weight-shedding stress. But it was what it was, and I found myself totally unready to be a wife.

His call was God-timed. I don't remember what Pete said when I asked if we could simply be friends on our wedding day, but it was enough to reassure me that I could marry him - should marry him. He doesn't remember either. He said later he didn't think he understood what I was asking.

Our self-written wedding vows included a phrase that read:

I will be humble before you and our Lord, confessing my sins and my failures and trusting in His mercy and your love.

So it was that two weeks after our wedding, reeling with confusion, unable to pretend at delirious happiness, I confessed my still-broken heart in full to my new husband. I kept my vow of truth to him, broke his heart, and we entered an emotional maelstrom that changed all our ideas of how our life was to be.

If I’d known how hard it would be for us, I would never have married Pete, never would have put him through the pain, the questions, the uncertainty. He had wanted to hold my heart for himself; now he believed I could never love him the way I had loved before.

I began to pray that he could be my first love, wishing away that first love God had used to make me His, trying to erase my broken heart.

But God didn’t unwrite my story. He didn’t change my reality, pick a new solar system where I could live. Instead, He took my shadow-sketched expectations of marriage and began to add color, creating what I now see as a masterpiece, a vivid image of authentic relationship I could not have imagined then.

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Related from Selah: God help us to find our confession...






(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Owning Truth - From Romantic to Real

Part II of my authentic relationship series. Read Part I, The Fact Is, I am Eve Too.

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The important thing is, God drew me to Himself through the loss of my first love.

I spent years waiting for God to bring him back to me and heal my heart up; I had watched my ideal become a shadow of the man I knew as God all the while wooed me to Him. It was through this loss that God taught me excruciating honesty with myself - and with Him - about what was in my heart. (Ps. 15:1-2) He asked me to pour myself out to Him, challenged me to bring the whole mess of my heart into my relationship with Him.

It wasn’t as if He didn’t already know what was there – my emotions, my struggle, my misdirected passion. “No brave front, no measuring up, just Kelly,” He overrode my broken-hearted embarrassment, taught me of my own humanity, created in His image to feel His own heart. Long months passed into years, and I found His heart to be the safest place I’d known.

As I grew into this God-love, it became apparent to me that if I were to marry (even the man for whose return I prayed), I would have to be the same person with my husband that I am with God.

Pete - Peter, my now-husband (I am still bashful to say his full name! It's like Jesus, so precious to me, so secret-deep in my heart-space...) - was a coworker that I didn’t know until we got rained into a coffee shop together with the Lord pushing him to ask the real that would cause me to set aside the shallow "deep" to which I’d resigned myself. When he asked about my God-passion and revealed his own, the layers peeled away from my heart with the shock of it. We didn’t stop talking for six months, until he was in love with me and I found hope that I could, indeed, love again.

But the transition between my wait-love for another and my it’s-time-now-love for Pete was shockingly abrupt. Neither of us realized the long healing process ahead for me, and ultimately, for both of us.

I married my husband with a broken heart.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

The Fact is, I Am Eve Too

The mood in the shop is welcoming, the air happy-laden with the warm scent of coffee, the light a comforting, cooling dim from the glare of the summer I leave behind me as I enter. I’m not really here for a warm drink on a hot day. I’m here for conversation, here for relationship, two friends learning one another.

We share who we are, and two hearts meet, and I am changed as I know and as I am known. We talk too long, and not long enough; we leave wanting more, because we are the same. Our camaraderie is born of the different and the familiar, the places I have been are not the same and I am fascinated by what I have not seen, newly aware of where I have not been.

We converse and we relate, and we become more real with each true thing that is spoken. Here, we enter into the life of the other. Eventually, the question comes, “how far will you go with me?”

So much hangs on my response.

Recently several “coffee-shop” friends confessed past affairs. They told of brokenness, of selfishness, of redemption and grace, of poor choices and new, wiser boundaries. Two other friends shared fears and fallout because of their parents’ affair-initiated divorces, explaining personal boundaries they own for the mistakes of their elders.

I have listened in aching silence, mostly.

I don’t understand their secrets, but I understand sorrow. I cannot comprehend sleeping with a man who is not my husband, losing a man to another woman, watching my parents separate over such a thing.

For an uncertain moment, I hold my breath over my coffee cup, realizing I am not the same as they, afraid I have nothing to offer, for my experience is so different.

But still they share in the quiet of this friendship coffee shop, and I know my own sin is often birthed deep in fertile heart-ground, wedging me away from the man who stands beside me, holding back the help-meet love he needs when I am tired, when I want to be someone I am not.

So here is the truth, the authentic me: I am dust, woman made from man. I have tasted the same fruit and if I do not dismiss you with the presumption that I am any better, I may grow with you. I may know you.

The fact is, I am Eve too, and I ask the same questions you ask, wondering at each encounter, “how far will you go with me?”

I release my held-breath as I remember the grace that is mine to give, remember why I know that grace.

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Over the course of several upcoming posts, I would like to expand and share this unpublished article on what I have been learning about authentic relationship.

There was so much of my life in this article I had not processed until I began to write it, and I just couldn't ready my thoughts for publication by the time my deadline rolled around. I may spread it out over a couple of weeks, do some regular posting in between, since I'm still focusing my thoughts. If you miss one, you can find the posts by clicking into this labels link.

I'd like to invite you to meet with me in my "coffee shop" either through email or in the comments sections (found in the little speech bubble at the top of my posts now!) on these posts , ask questions, start or join in this conversation. Some of my friends know my story after years of real conversations, some old friends may not know where I have been from where I started, some of my new friends may find opportunity to "know" me more.

*Recommended read: Joy, by Serena Woods





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)