Grow it Full

Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.  

-Ephesians 5:1-2

To live a life of love when I am so unfamiliar with the concept. To be sick from lack of love myself, yet refusing to get well. When I am love starved but refuse to eat.

I loved and broke and bled for years, pouring myself out for others. Now I am spent, heart so battered and layered with scar tissue I no longer feel its flesh. Tender pieces balled with bumps uneven across the surface. Walls constructed iron-clad grappled around my chest; I cannot let anyone or thing get close to examine my sore spots.

How can I imitate You when I have nothing left to give, and do not allow You to pry open my core to see what cuts me red in secret?

My scars run deep, heart scraped clean, and I have no energy to muster up the passion that once pulsed in my blood. What can You do with a frail frame like mine to grow it full? I cannot imitate You when I am barely able to lift my head from the pillow each morning, let alone set my heart on the surgical table and let You dig Your instruments around and stitch me up with new feeling.

I don’t know how to be any other way.

I don’t know how to let You in, though You knock so patiently and quietly at my door.

But what does Your love look like at a different angle? I don’t want to have such a hold on my heart. I want You to take it and blow a healing salve under my skin. I long for You to not let me down—if I give to You what is most delicate, will You promise not to hurt it? Will You show me how dependable You are, how strong and soft and secure?

I do not give my heart away easily. But I have heard of the love You offer, how it is nothing I have known. How could I not risk ripping the skin of my soul to let that kind of love in?

Come in. I am asking. I am inviting You to the private places I’ve kept locked. I am so very tired of fighting. Slip through to the space I have open to You, lean into me and soothe me like I’ve never felt calm to catch fire. For You are my revival, my watchman, my redeemer. Rend me helpless to do anything but fall into Your embrace and realize the joy of Your love I’ve been pushing away is here to stay.

Linger:

Do I recognize how dearly loved I am as God’s daughter?

How can I live a life of love like Christ did?

God, what are You saying to me through these verses?

I am so tired of my heart twisting in pain, in the hurt of others, and to let the full weight of this world collapse in on me. But Lord, this is something You have set within me, designed in my DNA. You must help me in the hurt, in the scared places that tremble at Your touch. Please be gentle. Be my redeemer. Amen.