Beckoned To Trust.

Much of my life has been marked by pain.

So much, that I have spent years working to unravel the beliefs, failures, and shame that have been my inheritance.  I have marked my life in my inabilities and my desperate longings to succeed.  I have clawed at hope and screamed in my broken lack.  Each day marks a striving, a gut wrenching desperation to be better than I am.  Each night the agony, that I am still just me.  A little broken, a little lost, longing to be loved.

It is this longing that haunts my soul.  The desire to be seen with joy and pleasure.  Day after day, I throw myself on the alter of prayer that I might please, love, and be so much better than I am.

I cannot see, hear, or feel love.

Terror - my constant companion, that what love I do have will be ripped away in a moment.

I strive continually and live brutally scarred by my failures.

It is here, if you look past the smile, the platitudes, and the soft conversation, that you may see the wild in my eyes.  The soul - desperate, the child begging.

Yet, few see.  As most are so lost in their own soul search, heart hunger, that they are unable to feel or sense the need in another.

It is to this broken and shame-filled place that the Great King, the Mighty God speaks - when he whispers ‘trust’.

It is in the depths, the hidden, the brutal chambers of our soul - that he ministers, gentle love.

As a child I knew only abandonment and shame.  I knew that I was not worthy or deserving of love.  I knew that I was the cause of all wickedness and bad.  I heaped the brokenness of others on my head and crafted my own cell of rejection.

Trust, a dirty word.  Trust - the whisper before the knife.  Trust.  Each time I am beckoned, I curl back in fear.  

Trust.  

But, isn’t that just another way of saying you’re going to destroy me?  Can I handle another blow.  Fear weaves its darkened claws into my fragile heart and rips what I long to give.  It freezes my yes and pulls me into despair.  How can I trust, when I know it’s just the gateway to pain.

Again, He whispers, ‘trust’.

Then as I writhe in my longing and war in my fear, he shows me the love of a Father.  Soft and desperate, full of weight, fluid, kind - he looks at me.  His adoration shines, and I need not the words.  The gentle prompting of his Spirit pulls me in.

As once more the whisper, ‘trust’, floods my soul - I feel the child fear, the tormenting what ifs, fall at my feet.

It is in the place of love, when adoration, and acceptance shine over you.  When you can look, feel, and receive that it is for you - that the grip you have clung to can loosen.

Here, where love is tangible; when it warms like the sun the darkened cold of fear - that trust is no longer a step in fear.  It is a receiving of promise.  That good and bad will fall, joy and pain will exist - in the middle of it all - there is love.  Deep, breathtaking love.

When the Father turns his eye to the child and says, ‘I have never left, deserted, or hurt you.  I have never wanted your brokenness.  I have loved you in the middle of all that you believed.  I have never failed or abandoned you.’  

Here, in his loving yes - can I open my heart to the most wonderful and terrifying - I can trust.