"serve God, love me, and mend"

i choose to continue to tell this story. this is for my own benefit as well as anyone else's. there is a story of G-D in this year. This is the truth. Write it down.

The day I decided to leave, three people came up to tell me that I needed to rest after graduation. I shook from the fear that I might need to prove something more worthwhile to G-D. Was there not some country that needed my saving? Was there not some destiny that I owed him to fulfill? In the freedom to rest, I remember crying at random. I remember asking G-D to let me be human. I remember asking G-D to show me that he was good. I began to seek him in poetry and in philosophy. I remember learning that I could learn. This was all a break from my misguided understanding that there were tasks to accomplish for the L-RD.

I'm not sure anyone else knew how much I cried that semester. How often I shook in my sleep or prayed so deeply for relief. At the winery we talk about bottleshock. I am only learning that this refers to the time after first bottling when the wine is still getting rid of sulfur and CO2. Apparently, after a few months, all of this dissipates after time. Perhaps I too was going through bottle shock. I had met someone who saw me clearer than anyone in the whole world, and then it was gone. Bottleshock. All of a sudden, I was in a new surrounding that I could not comprehend. Though I had been there for years, everything felt foreign and unnatural. I moved stiff for months.

I don't remember much of Christmas that year. Except, that I fought a lot with one of my closest friends, and I escaped into the friendship of another. Both of these routes turned out to be wrong. The truest thing I remember is that I was afraid of the L-RD by then. "Don't get too close," I often whispered. I could not be transparent without the fear of collapsing.

And then there was the season of preparation. It was a sweet six months. We speak of it now with regret, though my heart holds none. It was like a detour. Not mine to hold, but mine to remember. That season makes everything harder now, of course, but I am not ashamed. We sowed roots deep and fast. We laughed. I like to think that when we left that season we promised each other to keep those memories locked in a chest for protection. I'm not sure what a good job we've done of it, but, I think we try.

At the end of that season, the season of sweetness, of learning, of experience, I nicknamed this year the 'year of forgiveness'. Four years of being in a place that i did not fit into, i was so tired of walking and nursing my bitterness. I needed to forgive my surroundings, I needed forgive my enemies, my resentments, my pain. I think most significantly, I needed to forgive the L-RD.

I have discovered a whole new facet of forgiveness since being here. G-D loves me. It is the first thing he tells me every time we meet. In being here, I have stormed with anger, fought demons in my memories, failed in my loneliness. I am lonely here. Moving here was not as magical as I had daydreamed. Life is still the same. I still wear my favorite jeans that have a broken zipper and don't fit and I still only touch reality a few times a day, and I still don't own a hairbrush. Life is the same, but I left so many things I loved. I left so many friends and even, I left love. It was not an easy move.

Forgiveness right now looks like bitterness displaced by love. It looks like evaluating the damage, and believing his promise that he works it together for my good. It looks like going through anger only to one day realize that I do not have to be. It is beginning to look like expecting G-D to give me what I plead for in men. A transition of sorts. And in it I am realizing why I left everything. Perhaps I found a treasure in a field somewhere, and sold everything to buy it. Perhaps a piece of my heart still believes somewhere that the L-RD is really worth all of this. And so I cling to all of the promises and mystery that surrounds him. I tell him, I forgive you, come back and come close. And what that really means is, I kneel down at his feet and wonder, how could I have ever lived without you?

"O God, I have tasted Thy goodness and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune god, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away." Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long."

-- a. w. tozer