When Strings Are Not Like Arms Around Me

Photo Credit: Reeve Carney

     Lately I’ve felt a bit like a puppet, rather than simply a lover and a friend of God.  Being in a place of sacrifice has been interesting.

     It’s a fine line between giving your heart away and disregarding your heart all together.

     Yes, the expected pain and heartbreak that sacrifice ushers in, has at times become subtly overwhelming.

     I think I just need to let go.

     I need to let go in a deeper way.

     I feel at times I’m trying to hold it all up--everything, in my own strength, you know, the plans that God has for my life, and those around me. As if I could, in my own strength control them and make all of these plans come about.

     I’m a bit tense to say the least. And my communication with people has felt stilted and a bit awkward at times. Yes, you could say, a lot has been on my mind.

     It would do me some good to stop holding my breath.

     To breathe deeply.

     Because I’ve noticed that when one feels like a puppet, the ground of our hearts become fertile with resentment. And I don’t want to have seeds of resentment sprouting up on me in the middle of my 2013. 

     So instead, I'm choosing to be honest...now, choosing to get still...now, to stop fidgeting...now. 

     I do want to feel arms around me. I want to feel valued.

     And that is the challenge.

     Because in the midst, I realize I'm not as good as I had thought I was at receiving love. You know, truly believing that I'm lovable, in all my dimensions. Actually, let me restate that in a different way:

     Just as there are deeper levels of love to encounter and experience outwardly, there are always deeper levels of love to encounter and experience inwardly, especially with God. The depths of His love cannot be measured. Which then means, I can constantly cultivate a deep well within my heart that is ever expanding to simply RECEIVE love.  And lets just say that my well had somehow shrunk.

     I often hear that receiving love is the hardest part. Not to simply let it wash over you, but to allow it to sink into every pore of your skin and deep into your soul, and for that love to find a home in you.

     I want to allow myself to be loved...deeply.

     I know that God is loving me through this process. I just get a little nervous sometimes in the process.

     I now see that it was actually my own strings of striving that had me entangled. And not the light yoke that God has for me. 

     Today, as I was driving in my car, I played a simple worship song, I put that song on repeat for about an hour, and I purposed to allow God's love and thoughts towards me to penetrate my heart and my mind.

     And that somehow was the beginning of something.

     And I began to breathe deeply.

Wisdom's Knocking:

"The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved
--loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."

-Victor Hugo