Long For

My soul yearns for You in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for You.

-Isaiah 26:9

What does your soul long for?

What do the inner spaces of your heart burn for? What strikes the match and sets your passion aflame?

In the most sensitive chambers, your most tender pieces, what is it you really and truly yearn for?

Surface. You keep it all above the surface, bobbing in the abyss and hollowing up your heart with a soft smile and simple greeting that tells the world you’re fine, that you’re simply floating through this life.

But that’s not what you’re meant for. You know it, in the terrible tremors that rattle your ribcage and keep you up at night, breath heaving, head spinning. Reach your fingers beneath the waters and delve into the inner workings of your hidden secrets, the closed doors that dare not come unlocked. Turn over the tables, smash the lamps and watch them shatter across the floor. Let out the lion that prowls within. Open up, admit to yourself that what you seek is more than surface words and clever conversation.

There is something you crave. In the caverns of your chest, it pulses, murmurs, reaches out with ready hands. You cannot keep control if you’re meant to lose your life.

So what is it you can’t keep washed down? What is it that fills your eyes with purpose, that lingers on your lips with sugared satisfaction? What is it that keeps you up in those marble midnight hours, trembling and flapping its wings, daring itself to unclasp the hinge of its cage?

Purple hearted, bleeding beauty that penetrates your armored skin. There it lies, ready and willing to fight with you. To launch your cause and blow this world into another orbit souls have never seen.

Go into that sacred space. Train your eyes to the darkness and feel around until you find its wriggling form, eager to be unleashed.

What is it your soul longs for?

Father, my heart bleeds. Even when I don’t want to admit it, can’t find the way into those sacred chambers. But You have instilled these longings within me, these passions I can’t shake. Please help me know what to do with them, to admit to wanting more and steady my breath to linger under the surface. Take my heart and turn it to Yours. Amen.