If a thing is beneficial in a real way, blatant and ongoing reassurance seems even to take a long while to produce embracing of truth. Like as with the Lord. As with His love. I know He loves me, but...
...apart from having been utterly demolished to witness unabashed the severity and unwavering ardency and utterly consuming reality of His love in an instance which absolutely changed everything...
Which is horrible. Grievous. To be loved unerringly, infinitely well--righteously and with no shadow of turning...yet to doubt the consistency and perseverance of such a love?
Grievous.
Yet I'm still that self-centered and small-minded as to view His love, in part, in contorted retrospect, per a lens which would gauge it as though meritable upon something of my own intrinsic nature or worthiness, rather than accorded as attributable to His nature, alone.
He imbues with merit, according to His own good will, for His pleasure to so do--not apart from Him, but in accord with His will and by His design. Our worth is as given, as made in His image...and as loved by Him. Not as apart from Him.
And He does love us, though.
Which is a point of which there's been a bit of going round, the past couple weeks, particular. Regarding unworthiness and lack of merit to be loved, and even extending to argument regarding innate inability to even love as due in response (attempting further to argue unworthiness to receive, as being incapable of responding adequately in kind).
None of these last are valid arguments, though. His love never did depend upon my ability to respond sufficiently well as to somehow "prove myself worthy," per adequate response. And His love never depended upon ability or inclination to be worthy or due it, from the outset.
He loves because it pleases Him to do so. He loves because He is inclined to do so. For the joy set before Him, He endured shame, reviling, mockery, crucifixion, and death. For He so loved...
That takes a lot of the pressure off. And it would be nice if simply seeing marginally clearly for a moment was sufficient to remain at rest in the knowledge of His love and provision and good will toward me. But I'm human and fickle and frail and I falter quickly, so I need Him to remind me clearly and often.
Because it takes all of a couple minutes' (*ahem*--seconds') worth of time left to my own thoughts and devices for doubt and disbelief to occlude vision of the truth of who Jesus is and of what He's done for me--of His love, which is all the reason I need to endure and persevere through anything. For the sake of His love, so long as He would be near me, I would follow Him into any fire. Not without human fears and pains and tremblings, but held steady by His firm grasp and His steady presence. By His love, sustained and succoured.
I sought love wrongly before surrendering to the truth of Christ's sovereignty--always broken and beaten and dejected and rejected and mocked and abandoned. Desperate, and despairing. There is no love apart from truth. And Christ is the truth. Jesus is God and His sacrifice to atone for our sins must be confronted. His love either despised or embraced.
His love is what I'd blindly sought. At times even sustained much by the hope of His love--pure, untainted by worldly turnings, never wavering, all-consuming...
I can't live without Him. And needn't.
Of accepting that He could love so completely and unwaveringly, though, there's the reminder that He acted without my involvement. He pursued me when I was actively seeking to avoid Him--not entirely consciously, but nonetheless. And He didn't cease pursuing when I was blatantly defiant, avoidant, and oblivious.
He hasn't ceased even now, when my heart's obviously still so self-consumed as to doubt Him and His constancy.
There's just the reminder that He has loved and He will love. And my heart is in His hands. To do with as He will.
I do love Him so much as to know Him well enough to trust His keeping.
Which has increased as the trials have increased in severity and bitterness. He's continually shown Himself utterly capable in the midst of absolute impossibility.
To such extent that being in between the Rock and a hard place seems the absolute best, now--there's no room to fritter away time with anxious thoughts over "planning out what I need to do," or "reconsidering what I should be doing," or "outlining how to begin to address a situation"...not where you're in an absolutely impossible situation.
Like the whole deal of being incapable of walking for a couple days, in 2014 (probably the briefest example along these lines). I spent the first day and a half trying to think my way out of it--always, always, always had made an absolute point of refusing to give up, no matter the odds. It was personal dogma that I would find a way through, over, or under, no matter the circumstances. I would find a way. Period. (Being raised a Girl Scout didn't help along that front.)
So, I remained convinced for over a day that I would be able to figure out some way forward--some way to maneuver life in a reasonable manner without ending up living on the streets--should it be the case that I remained unable to walk. Third story apartment. No job (had quit after getting out of the hospital). Money enough for less than two months' worth of then-current bills. Car falling to pieces (it was an interesting testimony to the people who worked on it: I professed trusting God to get me through and hold my car together, while they couldn't conceive of how I'd avoided destruction in the vehicle, already--professing Christians, this). And other things. Like effectively being in total isolation, for all practical purposes.
Second day in, despair had its full work--I couldn't conceive of any way to maneuver that didn't end with worsening the situation, at the least...given potential for being unable to walk again, as it were. None. Couldn't conceive of how to manage to go forward (and if you would like to survey all the details of the situation in detail, to attempt to do so yourself, you'll have to contact me for a more thorough run-down of all pertinent circumstances). Just no way.
The Lord was merciful though, at that instance, to remind me of who He is.
He's God. The impossible is nothing for Him. He created a universe out of nothing. He can make ways where there are none.
So, I gave up. And just accepted that He could do the things. And accepted that I couldn't even begin to conceive of how He might do so, because there was no way forward. But...accepted that wholly in context of remembering He's God.
And I trusted Him to make a way. Because I had nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Woke up the next morning and I could walk. Which...being human, means I completely took it as something granted in due course and didn't even stop to reflect upon it at that point. Went back to attempting to schedule life.
But He didn't stop intervening.
Thing is, though--again and again, it really seems the best place to be is in a position where there's no feasible means of deluding myself into even beginning to conceive the idea that I'm somehow responsible for how things are going or for how they're going to work out. So long as there's any room for the delusion of control to manifest, human tendency is for it to do so.
Which is destructive, because it's a lie. It's sin. And sin works death.
It's a lot easier not to worry, when there's absolutely no way possible for me to survive. It's a lot easier not to be anxious when there's absolutely no room allotted for me to consider myself in a position to determine the course of circumstances.
So long as I'm in an absolutely impossible situation--not one willfully wrought, but wrought per pursuit of the Lord (though He is exceedingly merciful)--trusting Him comes easier. Or, at least it does once I've surrendered to the realization that He's in control and I'm not...that He knows what's actually going on, and no matter how much I might think I know, I have no idea whatsoever.
He has ordained things from the beginning of time, that His will would be done. He has ordained grace. He has ordained good to those who love Him. He will be glorified. We know these things.
Yet it's hard to truly rest in those things, sometimes, in the midst of circumstances which are absolutely devastating and heart wrenching and utterly, inconceivably unendurable and impossible.
Giving up, though. Same deal over being unable to conceive of Jesus (or anyone else, for that matter) loving me without ever changing His mind about it...
I can't rationalize my way into means of conceiving of the impossible.
Nor rationalize a means of comprehending quite how or why He loves.
But I can take Him at His word. Because He helps me do so.
And because He keeps drawing me to a position of greater dependence--not of my own ability or will, but of His. Wanting to, yes, but knowing it's a mystery still of how He has ordained such a thing as love and provision.
He does show Himself strong on behalf of those who trust Him.
That showing doesn't always mean what we'd like it to mean.
Over the months in 2015 where one sister initially went a.w.o.l. and then did actually disappear for a brief while, I thought that seeking Him and ardently praying to Him for intervention would result in her deliverance and restoration of family entirely. She did turn back up, family was partially restored, but then there was vast brokenness again.
And now brokenness beyond even what there was, furthered earlier this year. Brokenness on all fronts. Distance entirely. Inability to even interact.
Nothing but prayer, awaiting peace and direction and intervention and knowing the real possibility of eternal loss or further contentious confrontation or of whatsoever other difficulties might come. I have sought Him along the while, to keep a clean conscience before Him so that regardless what might happen, I can defer to Christ knowing I've proven myself again and again incapable of truly right action or thought apart from guided deference to Him.
He didn't fix things the way I wanted them fixed. He didn't heal the way I wanted them healed. In fact, things are far more visibly broken now than they ever have been.
But I trust Him more, having had to rely upon Him every step of the way to hold me together in the midst of progressive loss of everything I'd ever cherished. Not blindly entered, but painfully as pursuit of truth.
Counting the cost.
Not able to justify myself either. Only seeking to cling to Christ and maintain whatsoever much a clean conscience toward Him as He helps to do at any given moment. Tempted so often to compromise, faltering so often...trusting Him to help, having no other means of forward momentum. No other hope.
The more I've failed, the more I've faltered, the more I've strayed, the more I've grieved, the more devastated I've been, the more clearly He has become all hope and constancy and direction and keeping power and sanctuary and comfort and love...all truth. That those things else which were looked to for direction and comfort are put to the lie which they are, through the fire and under weight of the truth of His own intervention to shelter, protect, direct, and provide.
I had forgotten that the things I was looking for and hoping for weren't granted, but greater peace and trust in Christ has ultimately been the recourse for my pleadings and supplication and griefs and despair. He's given praise for mourning. And beauty, of a sort, for ashes.
He is the prize.
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