Today has been a day of solemn joy and measured sorrow. I walked through the woods this morning, and the vividness of the green leaves and the pale pink-purple of the wild geraniums and the soft white-pink of the Trillium made me breathe a little bit deeper. It was so solemn, and yet strangely joyful to walk there this morning. It is only as I type this that I realize: that was a holy place, and any attempt I make to put into words what I felt is doomed to fail. I don't understand what went on in my heart this morning as I walked to the bus stop, I only know something was going on, and it was solemn and joyful even though I didn't feel the joy.
And then tonight, I surrendered something to God with tears and sighs, but I don't even know what it was that I gave up. I just know something happened, and I am grieving it. "A chosen loss is different from repentance, when we give up something that was never ours to have. With a chosen loss, we place on the alter something very dear to us, something innocent, whose only danger is in its goodness, that we might come to love it too much. It is the act of consecration, where little by little or all at once, we give over our lives to the only One who can truly keep them." - John Eldredge, Desire
In the past when I've given something to God I've always done it angrily, or petulantly, with ill-grace and guilt and anger, but tonight I'm just sad. I'm choosing to live a life that is open to the currents of sadness that flow around me constantly. I'm choosing to be real when it is so much easier to mask my feelings under others', to sublimate my desires into fiction where they don't directly touch me so much.
And this is me, the real me, without artifice and distraction and smoke screens. I am lonely. I can be surrounded by dozens of people whom I love and who love me and still feel so alone. This is not to make anyone feel guilty, but I rarely ever feel deeply understood, or even that people want to deeply understand me, and like most people I want to be known and loved. When I am merely loved without understanding also being sought... It is easy to believe that I am not loved at all under those conditions. The purposes of my heart are deep waters, and I desire men and women of understanding to draw them out, but it rarely happens and so sorrow sits heavy in my heart.
I was reading 1 Corinthians the other day and although I've read this verse many times (I mean, it's even my profile on here) I was struck with it anew. 1 Cor 2:2-5 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
I rarely come to people in weakness and fear and much trembling. I do things to make sure they will accept me, I pave my way with good reasons why people should like me and listen to me. There is a part of me, however, that recognizes this verse is for me this summer. And so this is me, this summer. This is me resting in God, waiting on him, being with you. The real me, in weakness and in fear and much trembling. And I pray that I would know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified, and that my message to you is in demonstration of the Spirit and of power and not in plausible words of wisdom. Maybe that's why I have no words for and cannot explain how I felt this morning, what happened this evening. It was real, and it was God, and that is enough.
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