Monday, March 5, 2012

drawn to redemption by the grace in his eyes

it's easier to be broken, it's easier to hide.

it's easier to crawl inside my shell of loneliness and insecurity.

i'm scared, and forgetful, and vulnerable, and i'm not good enough.

and it doesn't matter how many times i tell myself that He loves me in spite of all that. that it doesn't matter what i've done but He loves me anyway. i tell myself that every single day, and i still forget. i still never ever feel worthy or good enough for anything at all. i am so unwilling to accept that grace has made me beautiful. so unwilling to accept that because i am so beautiful to Him, then i am worth it.

i think i'm scared of healing, and i don't even know it. i mean, it doesn't always feel good. at times it does hurt to be healed.

so i write 'holy and beloved' on my wrist, and i look at it when i'm scared, and i write it again when it starts to fade.

escape,
she cries from empty wounds,
time won't close the gap life gives us,
run away,
she cries with eyes hope hungry,
these hardest hearts we leave don't need us.
don't weep,
she cries with eyes dry empty,

but i cry anyway. you have to let the hurt and insecurity out somehow. i don't know how to accept that He loves me unconditionally, and that all these fiercely beautiful souls around me who tell me that i'm beautiful and that they love me really actually mean it.

i wondered aloud to Him a few days ago when everything hurt. i had a dream and i watched it shatter, and i wondered why. why He would give me such a grand dream only to let it fall? why He would let my heart be broken just like that?

answer just a whisper, if for no other reason than just to pick us up again. so that at the crux of the pain of a heart broken in half where i fall and happiness seems so far away, He can say, oh how i love you.
because how can we be healed if we're not hurt? how can He fix us if we're not broken?

maybe i won't learn fully how to accept love until heaven. maybe that's part of what life is, just learning how loved we are. when you open your heart to love, the questions dissolve, and everything is a little easier.

it's something i -we- have to believe again every single day: we are not destined for wrath, we are so loved, and this has to become our way of life. a constant peeling back of the layers of revelation of redemption, and how that is love, and that has to be our confidence.

i know it won't ever come all at once, and maybe that's the beauty of it. that we get to savor the healing waters of redemptive love that gave all to set us free because it happens slowly.

it is reassuring to remember the lesson of Beauty and the Beast: that a thing must be loved before it is lovable. that's me. He wants me. He decided i was worth dying for, and that is the only reason i am Beauty now, but still that's enough.

"it was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too."

i'm working on that. i am learning.

and He is a wonderfully patient teacher.

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