I am my Beloved's

I have been ruminating on this idea of the desert place for some time (you can read more here), but recently I've been thinking about the fact that the desert involves more than just rest. It also involves giving things up, a dying to self, a mourning. For me, especially, it has involved mourning the way I used to do friendships. I miss getting to see friends as often and as in depth as I used to. I miss pouring my heart into friendships, pouring mugs of dark tea at the kitchen table and talking for long hours. 

The other night, as I was sitting in the dark nursery rocking my baby, I began to cry for the loneliness of it all. But as I sat, and listened, and didn’t run away from the feeling, the Holy Spirit reminded me of this: any time the Lord calls us to give something up, he’s calling us to something better, more delicious, lovelier—that is, more of himself. Any time he calls us to pull back from something that filled our time or hearts, He’s always calling us to more intimacy with him, to taste him and touch him differently and more so. And then I was crying for this other reason, for the Lord has chosen me, and you also, for a kind of one-on-one, bone-deep love that only he can give.

He really doesn’t call us to the difficult places because he wants us to grow thick skin. He calls us as he did the Israelites in Hosea: “Therefore I am going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her,¹” and as he did his disciples in Mark: “Come away with me by yourselves, to a lonely place, and rest a while.²”

He wants to woo us.

I have witnessed it time and time again. Receive the difficult, lonely places as gift, and receive a clearer vision of the Bridegroom’s devotion. Three months of by-the-toilet-round-the-clock morning sickness? Demanding, stressful, I’m-barely-staying-sane job? Gut-wrenching grieving over our miscarried baby? Every time I have looked back, baffled—I have fallen more in love with Jesus.

I can only conclude, then, that in these days of toddler tantrums, grocery bags under my eyes, and little time for friends, I will come away with better eyes for Emanuel, a deeper heart-knowledge of his love for me.

The other day I was noticing all of the advertisements and YouTube videos I see about using self-help to find personal freedom and become a creative, purpose-driven individual. We are drawn towards the notion of being our best selves. I wondered, then what is Jesus for? My life is marked by the freedom and healing I've seen him work in me, but what is he for if the world is telling me I could have learned how to be myself without him?

Ah, why do I always forget?! It all comes down to love. Without it, nothing else matters³. Jesus heals and frees not just so that we can fulfill the purposes he has for us, but for the sake of intimacy itself. He yearns for us to know the kind of love that, overflowing, swallows every other objective. He sings of it throughout scripture and aches for us to sing back, perhaps with off-key voices but always unreserved: “I am my beloved’s and he is mine.⁴”

The instance of rocking my baby reminded me yet again yet again yet again that there is nothing as delicious or awe-filled as skin-to-skin intimacy with the Creator of the galaxies, the Creator of my fingertips. Only this God Jesus can offer that. Only he can fill my deepest desire to be known, to be naked with the Almighty.

At Mass yesterday, as the priest was preparing the Eucharist, I got this sense that Jesus was disrobing on the altar. The Triune God laid his life down of his own accord⁵, went through loneliness and torture and finally through hell itself, so that he could be with us when we were called even to the smallest of sadnesses. He offers himself over and over in the most vulnerable way, as the Bridegroom to his Beloved, so that we can understand the ocean-sized scope of his love for us, what it means for every hair to be numbered. 

He’ll do anything for intimacy with his Bride, and he did everything for it on the cross.

Maybe it’s mothering toddlers or sickness or moving cross-country; maybe it’s losing a job or losing a spouse, but wherever the lonely place is right now, you and I can trust that the Lord is asking us to come away with him, to show us more of himself—unclothed, secret, close—if only we have eyes to see.

¹ Hos. 2:14  

² Mk. 6:31  

³ 1 Cor. 13:2  

⁴ Song 6:3  

⁵ Jn. 10:18