Crushed

Chaos calls to chaos, to the tune of whitewater rapids. Your breaking surf, your thundering breakers crash and crush me. Then God promises to love me all day, sing songs all through the night! My life is God’s prayer (Ps 42:7-8, MSG).

“I’m going to crush you with love.” Those are the words Father spoke to me a few months ago in response to my deep conviction of what I perceived as my lack of properly appreciating all He’s done for me. I asked Him to crush me – having no idea how He would choose to do so.

It has yet to cease to amaze me how He responds to the naked heart’s cry of His own. When I expect Him to punish, He loves more. When I want Him to yell at me, He just looks at me with His heart in His eyes. While I’m waiting for Him to walk away, He moves closer than before, until I finally take the hand He’s extending.

As Father continues to reveal and destroy my misconceptions of who He is, I’m realizing how many of my responses to Him are born out of my experiences with others.  I don’t think I’m alone. For whatever minority of folks who have lived life without major traumas or disappointments, that could be a wonderful thing. But most of us have experienced crippling things that left us grasping for some explanation that allows us to feel less vulnerable as we hobble into His Presence, pretending not to notice our own limp.

We’re seeing Him as the father who died young and left us, the mother who didn’t know how to love or protect us, the boyfriend who raped us, the girlfriend who cheated on us, the friend who betrayed us, the teacher who belittled us. . . all while we’re singing about the wonders of His love. Our minds are tied into knots trying to reconcile what we’ve known with what we so desperately want to be true but have become so afraid to trust – that there is a Love “as strong as death, its jealousy as unyielding as the grave” (SoS 8:6): “Is He really that good? Is it really safe to trust? Will it really be different from every other time? I want to believe – but I’m so afraid . . .”

As awkward as it is to stagger around with all our baggage, pretending it isn’t there, we prefer it to stopping and looking at exactly what it is we’re lugging into His Presence as we say He’s all we want. Somehow we believe that looking at our fears means we don’t love Him enough. Or else the fear of the pain we’ll face by dealing with those things chases us off. And so a-limping we go, into His Presence and out again, grateful for our time there, but left with an undeniable ache after failing once more to fully surrender to our Father’s embrace.

This isn’t to say we don’t love Him! We can be sold-out soldiers, laid-down lovers, enraptured with our King. But the thing about love is that it wants the best for the other person, and Jesus is no different. It’s not enough for Him that we love Him – He needs us to experience His love in return. That’s where we are changed, that’s where we learn to become a reflection of Him – in that place where we allow His love to ravish us, wreck us, and absolutely refuse to leave us the same.

Of course, we have a choice. We can choose to love our fear more and listen to it muttering in the middle of the night about the dangers of vulnerability. We can run in the other direction when our Healer allows circumstances to crack open the box where we’ve buried our deepest wounds.

Or we can choose to believe those sweet whispers He’s managed to slip past our walls late at night or early in the morning when our defenses were down. We can open our eyes to see His tears mix with ours as we let Him pour His blood over the scars and poorly stitched gashes on our hearts. We can let Him love us past the wounds and hurts into the place where we become the ones who carry the balm to other wounded ones.

We all have the desire to be loved with a perfect love – it’s the hunger He placed in us from the beginning to lead us to Him. Yes, there are snares and traps and distractions, heartaches and heartbreaks that threaten us with a seemingly unbreachable chasm between our reality and His desire. Yes, you’ll have to dig your way past your limited and damaging understanding of who He really is and wants to be to you.

But there’s nothing impossible in His Kingdom, and He’s promised to never walk away from His own. Why not take the risk? Why not trust one more time? Why not tell Him there’s nothing in you He can’t touch . . .  have . . . and finally heal. He’s waiting with heart and arms open wide . . .