Movement

Not long ago, I was driving back from San Diego with one of my roommates. Sand still stuck to our feet, colors of summer sun setting on the rise and fall of solid green. Beautiful. I was verbally processing, a rare and often unproductive venture of mine. Not-very-filtered honesty. Serious stuff: trust in God, blaming God, being single, being sad. Lamenting the disconnect between my heart and my head. He isn't to blame. I know that. But He could make it better. He can, I know He can. He doesn't. What sense can I make of that? What does He want from me? These were the thoughts running through my head and some of them, out of my mouth.  

The thing about verbal processing/filterlessness that I don't like is the lack of closure. Everything inside spilled out, messy. I can clean up the mess but I can't scrub hard enough to get rid of the silence that follows. Vulnerability. Before the God of the Universe, so exposed. And not in my best light.  

The moment passed. We listened to music and enjoyed the view. I dropped my roommate off at the house and headed to the store to pick up the movie we had somehow found the time to reserve on the drive home amidst all that verbal processing. So, alone in the car, I turned the music down reluctantly and exposed the ugly again. I allowed myself (forced is more like it) some honesty with the God. All the things that He heard me process with my roommate. All the things He already knew before I ever said a word. The lack of closure, answer, clarity. The frustration, confusion, disappointment. The messiness. In the Psalms, David refers to it as pouring out my heart to Him. That's what I did. And somewhere between my house and the Redbox, the light bulb flashed. The light bulb that holds within it the mystery of eternity.

Jesus loves me.

How do I trust the one who holds me? The one whose hands are strong and powerful and doesn't always do with them what I wish He would? How do I make sense of what I can't make sense of? By believing down to the very depths of my being that Jesus loves me. My answer to joy, my answer to sorrow. The words I whisper when my heart is broken for love or for loss. The muscle movements of hands that accept exactly what He gives, everything.

He loves me.

These words turn my eyes towards Him, light. So powerful, so vulnerable, these words. It could be that He moved heaven and earth to hear me say them. And if I spend every day of the rest of my life making it a habit to believe them, I will not have wasted time.

That day, that moment, it changed me. It changed everything. My view of the world, my view of God, the nature of reality, me.

That moment is moving from not pushing Him away to stepping towards Him. Movement thirty years in the making.