Naked

In April, my engagement to be married crumbled before my very eyes. In the space of a few hours I found myself plopped squarely back in Texas after living in my Prince Charmings's cornfield-packed county for several months. Arriving back, I was desolate, destitute, heartbroken, bleeding and visionless. Well, maybe not visionless as much as visions were in a state of death. I thought I was marrying my true love. I'd never abided in a place with so little light before. While the previous years had held many dark and broken desert times, nothing compared to the dark tunnel I inhabited. It was if He had finally left me to rot in all my self-righteousness with nothing left to offer anyone, least of all myself.

I cried for Him to come for me. For hours I wept, begging for His Presence to not leave me in the midst of the excruciating agony. It was almost worse than a loved one dying...after all, it WAS a death of a love. But it also held themes of rejection and isolation and questions that would never be fully answered. And the shoulda-coulda-woulda's were rampant. So I wept for hours for His Presence to rescue me from the squalored pit I inhabited. So many hours were spent asking Him to come for me and my heart and soul were worn down to paper-thin imitations of their identity. I now understood so clearly Frodo's weight of the ring; I resonated with his cry of feeling like butter scraped over dry bread.

My prayers eventually turned to "Father take me home"...a mournful cry that was less suicidal and more a recognition of my alienation in this world. Desperate for any moment of relief, my soul watched for Him. I doggedly waited for a moment when His voice would speak, pridelessly begging for Him to do something on my behalf. I reminded Him of my identity as His daughter; Of His Scriptures promising to give me a future; of Luke 12 promising to give me good gifts, the gift of the Holy Spirit; of my place in His hand; of how He was and is supposed to manifest His love for me in the ordinary every day; Most often I would cry out from the dark, damp pit I inhabited, the pit with a darkness so black it fell like a heavy current in the putrid air sucking all life out of my lungs. Each day I would think, "I can not get any lower than this. Surely today is the day when I've hit rock-bottom and it is now time to work my way back up." But then that day would surprise and wound me as I descended deeper into the darkness, to places that some never go.

I knew nothing other than pain and darkness at times. At other times I would be so numb that I would imagine myself in a state of healing. And then excruciating agony would come crashing down on me the next day until I was reduced to howling like a wounded animal. I'd never heard such noises emit from my mouth. But there was a point when tears and rocking in a fetal position wouldn't work anymore. It was at this point that I would ask Him where He was. I begged Him to take me home...told Him, "there's nothing left of me, I can't handle this and You know I can't handle this." And I would hear nothing but my own voice. I would beg to hear something from Him...a crumb; Anything; To have one pinpoint of light. My heart and soul were convinced that He had, in fact, abandoned me while my mind was adamant that He was the Presence in the darkness. My mind waved the banner of His Voice. I battled for His glory in my soul. There were so many slivers of time that stretched on as eons into eternity as I would engage in spiritual battle for this life He has given me. Hearing a silent Voice saying, "soon, not yet," it was a waging of wars. Daily combats for the Voice He created in me waged wars against lies of lack of love, worthlessness, unworthiness, and more.

Each day found me with renewed vigor begging to be sent HOME.

Until there was no more feeling...no more noise...no more battling...just a deeply depressive nothingness. I had said/thought/prayed/screamed it all so many times that I was no more.

So I started to just sit at His feet. Not feeling His Presence at first, but believing He was there. I'd sit. I'd breathe. No strength to do anything else. Not even strength to do that really. Slowly it began to effect me. My breathing took on a rhythm not my own. It was if I was relearning to breathe. And life began to spin less. The darkness no longer sat as a blanket of terror. Rather, darkness morphed into a friend. A friend that focused my heart and mind and soul on Him. In the light, distractions abounded. Comfort brings contentment. But the darkness spurred on a frenzy of prayers I had never prayed. The pain made me see His face as the goal. With job, life, love all deleted, I was without identity. Or so I thought. Eternal reality spoke into me His truth: He and I are all that matters to my worth. If I do nothing else in this life, I am enough. I am enough because He is more than enough within me.

And here I sit.

Knowing His pulsing through my soul relies less on a moving of blood and more on a movement of life, His life within me.

I am so grateful. A month ago I was in a church service when the beauty of singing "He is mighty to save" and "How great the Father's love for us, how vast beyond all measure" left me with tears streaming unashamedly down my cheeks. I was overcome with His goodness in the midst of the pain.

I've walked through the numb times. The times of question. The times of anger. And most recently I've simply sat at His feet.

Now I wait. I'm waiting for Him to move me to what's next. Breathing all the while, I fall in step with Him, less noticing the surroundings and more noticing His face. Kinda' the same feeling I had when I was out with Justin, he was the only one around and I rarely noticed anyone else, kid, old woman, family, much less any other man. And now, it is this way with sweet Jesus.

He is my all. He is my heart.