The Brave Unfamiliar

I wish I knew what it was that keeps me nerveous around the God of the universe after so many years. I have walked with Him a long time, but still so often I feel like a shy, timid child desperate for a mother's skirt to hide behind when He is near. My prayers are monologues I continually tweak for the listening pleasure of my audience of One. Sometimes I tire of hearing my own quiet voice in the car praying through my list of items, like rosary beads, each one. I yearn for intimacy and tell Him so when I am feeling brave, but I retreat back into my nerveous familiar as quickly as I can. I guess I'm safe there. My rigid routines are well-established there. I can get along just fine there. Only I wish I didn't have to. Because I believe that the God of the universe is a God of wild and tender love for me. And for you. I believe that He moved Heaven and Earth to get our attention. He gently, kindly shakes our shoulders with images of the Cross, begging us to open our eyes and see. Pleading with us to lay down all of the things we do to try to reach Him and realize that He has already taken care of it. He doesn't need our help. His shed blood needs no reinforcements. I know this is true and yet so often I try to give Him what I think He wants from me. Even when I know He isn't interested in those works of my hands, I offer them to Him anyways because it's what I know. What I know is safe and it keeps Him at arm's length.

That's just not good enough anymore. I've been playing in puddles in the mud while He stands off in the distance, where the water meets the shore, waiting for me to join Him. I see Him waiting and hope catches in my throat. Its time I leave behind the nerveous familiar, my mud puddles, go to Him and face the brave unfamiliar.

Love in the Dark

I want to be brave. Brave like the girl who glows love from her face. Who doesn't shy away from new things or new people or things that come up that change her plans and foil her carefully laid schedule. Brave like the girl who opens her arms wide to dissappoinment when it comes because love from the Father's hand is love in any form, even the form that speaks of dying before living. Dying so that the living can come. Sometimes the dying of one or two dreams lay ashes down that form the foundation, the very bottom layer, of suprises too good for guessing. Suprises that eternity keeps secret even thought it knows and is bursting to tell but for the look on the Great Surpriser's face. He sees what the girl cannot and He urges her to hope. He wills her to be brave. Not only because He knows how much she wants to be called by that name, but because He knows that what lies ahead of her will break her heart for love and build it again for love and for love, one must be brave. For now, love is in the waiting and the hoping and the silence. For now, love is in the dark. It will not always be so, but while it is there, so will I be. And He with me.