I’m awake in the middle of the night.  Again.  I feel small tonight in the big dark.  But not in the small way that makes me want to disappear.  At least, not disappear from sight.  I’m picturing being swallowed up by Someone greater than I am.

Yesterday I worked quiet in my kitchen, the afternoon belonging just to me.  I washed dishes and hummed whatever came to my mind.  Sometimes it was Christmas songs.  Sometimes it was an old hymn from sunday school days.  Sometimes?  I was just quiet.  I felt peaceful and safe.  I’ve had a hard week.  My heart felt outside without a coat on it.  I felt exposed and vulnerable.  I felt called to be there.  I didn’t like it much.

I need to be real.  Achy real.  I’m not quite sure why but I sense Him telling me.  There’s a boy?  Not my “real” boy, in that he’s not “mine”.  I’ve had experience with that before, yes?  I’ve adopted two children and they are “mine”.  This though.  This is different.  This boy seems almost delivered to me.  His path before I met him has been a word I can’t find to fit. But he was given a fight inside.  So that he could survive.  The thing is.  Sometimes his fight hits me in the gut and I stumble back, feeling childish and shocked.  Wordless.  There’s something about his struggle, though, that seems to be grabbing into me and pulling out slop that needed to be pulled out.  It’s causing me to love in a way that feels bigger than what I’m afraid of.  That forces me to forget me.  It won’t let me go.

Last night I had a choice to make.  All week, this boy I’ve grown into love with, lashed out at me.  I felt angry and selfish and petty.  He was dishing it out and I had no bowl to put it in so I carried it in my stomach and wanted to throw it up but it wouldn’t come.  “Don’t come see me,” he’d said.  “I don’t want you there.”  Anger settled itself in the back of my throat.  After all I’d………”LOVE HIM.”  It didn’t feel like yelling.  Just like an urgent directive.  But……”LOVE HIM.”  There it was again.  What if….”LOVE HIM.”  I’ll not go, then.  It’s too risky. I can’t love like this.  Not like this.  I’ll just stay home…..”LOVE HIM.”

I put on my dress.  I put on my makeup.  I looked in the mirror.  “I will love him.  Regardless.”  And so I went.   Afterwards:  This.  “Tamara?”  I turned and looked at him full on.  “Will you come over and watch a movie?”  I didn’t.  It was late and it seemed a good thing to let him go home and get quiet.  But I leaned in and kissed him on the top of his head like I do; like he hadn’t let me do all week.  His fight was gone.  He let me back in.

I will love him.  I will stay.

Sitting in the quiet…….a hungry feeling in my gut.  No granola and raspberries can touch this.  God has walked through the rooms of my heart these past three years, wiping off thick layers of blindness and heavy.  He meant to make me a woman of His, set apart holy and pure.  He did that for me.  He did that.  He created and restored.  He did it by breaking me.

My appetite changed.  I finally understood “and He will give you the desires of your heart.” He did that. Not in a pious, churchy way. Not a mystical, “looking for signs” way.  Not a rule book way.  He loved me to His truth plus nothing else.  He changed what I was hungry for.

I sift through His word to me each day, some days more desperately than others.  Some days I know He’s there?  But I don’t go looking.  I’m prone to wander.  To grab panic instead.  Or cheaper, easier distraction.  He costs me.  He costs me everything I have to get Him.  And He sends me other travelers who banked it all on Him to set me right.

I sing this in my heart today.  Create in me……God?  Create in me….a heart that can’t tolerate anything but stained glass truth…..truth that reflects Your color without deceit, Your love without agenda.

Create in me, a pure heart.