leaning. learning. letting go.

I am feeling awake and alive these days; it is a return I've anticipated. I can taste, feel, smell, and enjoy again. I can appreciate beauty and move freely. I actually ran up the stairs today, skipping steps to retrieve my laundry. It was glorious!!

While I have no desire to go back to a place where I feel empty and drained and sluggish and heavy, I don't want to lose my grip on the truth of how truly bereft, how terribly empty I am without Christ to fill me. Things that I thought came from myself like the ability to extend basic kindnesses or to practice selflessness really don't originate anywhere within me. They start with Him.

It was never more clear than when I had nothing in myself to call upon: it starts with Him. I'm not sure how to say it in a way that doesn't sound trite or pithy. But after starting each day at the end of myself, I got a crash course on leaning into Him moment by moment.

I am already seeing the ways in which I am defaulting to old habits and ways of being. I find that when I can lean upon myself, I do. When I insist on being strong, it invariably limits the ways in which the power of God can be made perfect in my weakness. Leaning into Him more fully is a lesson I am learning and one I suspect that I will continue to learn and re-learn over the course of my life.

If anything, I'm perceiving with greater clarity how concurrently painful and beautiful it is to let go, and how ready He is to fill us when we finally do.

photo © 2008 jen fox photography

a heart more his

Here I am, God; I sit before you again with open hands. Sometimes they are all I have to offer you when the words just don't come, when they bubble out of my heart and get stuck in my throat. I've been choking on them again. I know you know these words even when my mouth is unable to put a shape around them, to put air behind them and let them out. So here I sit, cross-legged on the bedroom floor, Indian style. Open hands resting on my knees. Tears come freely.

This is all I have sometimes.

Just a few weeks ago, I brought you my heart and held it in these same open hands, feeling as though it was something tattered and dripping, not a little bit shredded. I wondered aloud what you might have for this place that has been empty so long, this place I have prayed so many times to be filled. You always told me no, not now and I confess I felt punished at times, wondered if you were playing a joke. I had grown weary of your no, at the stratum of your no's over the years and I found myself unable to pretend with you. I wondered if you always intended it to feel this dry and empty, if you intended for my heart to collapse in upon itself. And then for the first time, I asked you: what might you have instead?

You wasted no time in answering.

And poetry happened, and then the writer's conference; every day was something new. I won't forget when I woke up with your words in me and I let them come, feeling possessed by you, being overcome in mind and in body; you infused yourself in my fingers and the confession poured out. You are inviting me to step out into the open air daily: nothing around me or under me, just your voice whispering: go. And so I go, stepping out into the air. I can't comprehend the adventure before me.

And then something flitted before my eyes that I thought I wanted; I extended my hand and let it rest on my finger. I turned my hand and contemplated it from different angles. And then the most amazing thing happened: I said no. And I was able to say it with clarity and conviction as your yes takes root in me, but not without some tears. I am new at this. Unexpected. That word is on my lips frequently these days.

So I let it go and let the wind carry it away, my heart too entirely full of you for regret, unfolding and letting you in. Old things are dying and new things sprouting to life, blooming and fluorishing, deeply rooted in a freshly churned soil. Vibrant, alive; unexpected. Doubt is edged out, water is flowing through the desert.

Open hands, resting on my knees. The tears still come. But there is joy too, effervescent and bubbling up uncontainable. There is some death in this becoming: things familiar and comfortable are lifted from these open hands, things deeply molded to the shape of my grip. I turn over this new thing you've placed in my palms, wondering. Marvelling, receiving myself from you.

This heart is more yours.

tulip photo by kirsten.michelle