To Find Another

April. Where are the warm rains that bring the trees in bloom and hope for brighter days?

All I feel is brown, brittle grass that cracks and breaks at the slightest impact. All I see is barren space, gray that goes on, body of water without a horizon.

I had been digging in, doing the sacred work of excavation and listening, conversing with You in the deep, hidden places. But I have met an impasse, block of wall that won’t come down. Unfortunately, the block is in my mind and heart.

This season drags on. And I am so tired.

What do You want from me?

How do I let go?

How do I let go in letting go and live from a blank slate, unblemished heart?

Grow me, but don’t make it hurt so much. Save me, but allow me to keep my life.

I know You ask for surrender. Lose my life to find another. Hands clenched, I recoil and writhe in a constricted box of my own making. Refusal to continue the fight, to trudge through the hard. But it is harder to flail against You, a help for my heart if I lean into You instead. Trust Your strength, Your elusive goodness I am ever after.

Too much. It is always too much. I don’t know what I am asking, only some beyond-me yearning that I don’t understand.

My front yard looks like post-storm wreckage, branches and pine cones strewn all over the grass, chunks of trees littering the ground. One day I will get to raking, to begin the work of cleaning up. But now I just look at the scattered pieces of my yard and can’t help comparing to how it mirrors my insides.

One day I will begin the work again. One day I will let God touch these wounded places. But today I have more questions than acceptance. I will meet Him where I am, in the exhaustion, in the translucent, in the fortress of my being.

Where can I go to flee Your presence? For You are everywhere, in the heights and down to Sheol, the place of darkness. And Your hand formed my inmost being, sewn me in and around. You curl into me in these warm and black spaces, and I know You see.

See me again. Watch me, unhinge my closed heart because I have no energy to do so on my own. I am asking, giving permission.

You are not finished. You are on the move, even in my pause, reprieve.