To Exist in Love

It is one of those Sundays where I am left pondering on thoughts I haven't entertained during the week because of busyness and other things.  So here I am sifting through these thoughts in an attempt to evolve into someone who is able to sit peacefully with them.   Accepting that they are part of human life and growing from the realizations I stumble upon as I write myself into believing in them.

I find myself silenced in my own needs. Almost imprisoned by them. I want to shut them up and just escape them and yet I can't. It almost feels like I am forced to deal with them in this helpless disposition because I have tried everything and still I find myself in a place where I can't change my circumstances. When favorable interactions are present, I am assured. When they are absent, I am stricken with fear. And it is in this fearful place I am trying to learn about love.

The discomfort is intense. It gnaws. It scrapes at my insides and yet to escape it is just to postpone it because I'm going to have to deal with it again anyway. To be angry or to be frustrated would just mean dismissing it for a moment. But I'm going to have to face it again anyway. The discomfort, I'm beginning to realize is not always a fault to be found in the circumstances I experience but it is also because of my own incapabilities to handle the situations I encounter. Situations that do not fulfill my needs.

So here, the Lord teaches me to wait. The Lord teaches me about patience. And I have nothing else but to surrender into His hands and learn it and hope to God I don't crumble into the dust. Hope to God I do not breakdown like a lunatic. Hope to God that I do not retaliate in vehemence.

At this very moment, the marrow inside my bones feels like they are experiencing some kind of tumult. Like being seared in hot coal they burn with fury. This relentless pursuit by a fire that wants to consume every inch of weakness inside me that constantly trembles to its touch. I want to pound it in my head. This reality of being consumed by such a painful fire of purification. That is it not for my own demise. But it is for my strengthening. That it means purging away everything that will keep me from the interior freedom I so desire. The freedom that is only God's.

Right now I am beginning to learn, ever so slowly, that this interior freedom is more important than anything else I can ever achieve. More than my dreams. More than my longings. For life will always throw me experiences that I will be disappointed in. But only God, residing in me, can make me experience freedom from the anxiety that plagues these experiences because of the eternal hope that is present to all those who follow Him.

How I long for such hope. How I long for such reality in my life. The reality of the promise that God will work out things for the good of those who Love Him. And so I want to make a decision to be grateful in every moment. It is true that gratitude seems to counter the effects of resentment and bitterness. For when I say thank you in the middle of such an excruciatingly bitter moment, there is that purging that happens. A pause the exhales all the toxicity of human desire. And there is only one longing which is to be able to exist in love. No matter what circumstance.

(photo credits via chasing autumn)