A Leap

I keep starting to write things and then not finishing them, or choosing to not post them. My head and heart are a jumble of thoughts and feelings and I'm having trouble sorting it all out.

God has been driving home a point and I'm not sure why I can't seem to seek it or hold on to it. Every speaker or teacher I come across these last few months wants to talk to me about God's love. You wanna know why something so simple and obvious is tricky for me?

I don't think I believe in it as much as I'd like to say that I do.

I am finally uncovering the root of my strained relationship with God. Finally admitting and seeing clearly that I don't really get it. I have put my human understanding on an all-powerful God. I assume He doesn't really care anymore. I assume He's tired of my "circle of error," as Sixpence once called it. I assume that He isn't all that impressed with the way I mistreat the gifts He's given me and how I continue in a cycle of anxiety and sometimes depression. I assume He may not be looking for me to come up over the horizon on a dirt road like the prodigal son did. I assume that He is not like the father in this parable. If I really take a good look at what my heart believes about me in this prodigal story, I see that I'm afraid He wouldn't be waiting. And maybe He wouldn't even want to look at me.

Of course my head knows this isn't true. But somewhere along the way I started to get pretty insecure, to feel like I'm not worth waiting for. I'm sure there are a myriad of reasons that I don't need to go into, but for now I just really need to figure out how to feel loved by God. He is making it quite clear that He's trying and for some odd reason I'm resisting. Maybe I'm afraid of what He might reveal, what I might need to get rid of, or do. I'm starting to realize that's pretty silly since His plan and even the ways He works stuff out of me are probably pretty incredibly cool.
In my previous post about the Potter and the clay, I talked about this incredible love because I'm just starting to really grasp it. Isn't that funny? I've grown up with Christianity and I'm just now starting to get the love part. To really get it. What exactly does it look like? What does it feel like to really know it? And I'm starting to see that if I don't truly allow myself to learn more about that kind of love and believe God when He says it, then nothing else will work.
An amazing woman said something yesterday that I totally agree with. She said (and I paraphrase) that we come to this faith and then we immediately jump to trying to be all perfect and obedient and follow a list of do's and dont's and we totally skip learning about how God loves us. We don't allow the Holy Spirit to really get that message to the core of who we are. She said maybe we need to spend a little time away from any other kind of teaching, away from the fears that can be instilled in a Christian even at church, and just rest our head on the chest of a loving Father, letting Him speak His love to us.
So I think I need to do that. I'm so tired of thinking my same old self-defeating thoughts. I'm so tired of feeling unlovable. Maybe I need to study God's attributes from HIS perspective only and stop clouding my mind with the opinions of others. Just HIS word. And me. Reading about love and putting myself in the stories of love He left for us in His book. I've never really done that. I'm going to start with imagining me being the woman at the well. In those days it was an incredibly big deal for Jesus to talk to me. And then He knows all my stuff and still talks to me, looks at me, loves me enough to tell me I'm worth changing my ways. He points out that the way I'm trying to fill myself isn't really working and that He wants fill me with something that won't fail me. Him. His love and water, leaving no space for emptiness.

"Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed, says the Lord, who has compassion on you." Isa. 54:10

P.S. I'll be posting little updates as a way to keep myself accountable to doing this. I usually get distracted and forget. I'm probably not the only one who needs a little dose of love... so I hope we can take this little trip together, learning that there's a Father who really is watching the horizon to see the faces of children He never forgot and eagerly awaits. Simply to start by showing us His unfailing love.