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
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