Thursday, June 22, 2006

Broken

I originally wrote this June 5th. I was going to post it then, but the times after that there were other things that needed to be said instead, so I am writing this here now.

I was talking to my mom about faith, grace, God and our difficult journey, our difficult fight to deal with our baggage. I am consistantly overwhelmed with how gentle God is with me. How can He keep forgiving me my trespasses when I am arrogant and selfish and unmerciful and mean and sinful and corrupt and tainted, and deliberately so? Why is there no limit to His love and forgivness, and why do I feel the need to find the end of His patience? It frustrates me that God will never stop loving me and forgiving me. It humbles me and breaks me. I am not worth this. Give this love to someone who won't throw it in your face as if it were so much garbage. Please stop breaking my heart with your endless love. And yet I cling to it with all my soul because I'll die without it. I adore Him and hate myself for my pathetic snivelling weakness. I hate that I will betray Him again. I hate that He will never give me what I deserve, only what He deserves. How can I be so broken, needy, adoring and full of hate? How can I hate the One who loves me so unabashedly, the One I long to love completely?

How can my brokenness be all that He wants? When all I can say is "Help thou my unbelief", how come that is enough? When all I can do is beg for faith, that is all He wants from me. When all I have in me is a tearful cry to be open to Him, He requires no more of me. That is somehow enough even though to me it feels inadequate. How can I have the balls, the nerve to come before the Creator with nothing more than a plea for His grace, His mercy, His faith and His love because I have none of my own and I come to the Lord and Master of the Universe with only the hunger for love and the longing to be filled. Muddy, in rags, filthy and bedraggled I come before Him with grasping empty hands and He says "Come closer, my child". And He gives me more than I can comprehend. He gives me things I can't even appreciate and I throw them away untasted. He calls me His child and He holds me, dirty as I am, and keeps giving until I cannot hold anymore and His gifts spill around me and I'm surrounded. And I don't understand why, or how, He can love me at all. I've never loved Him with the love He deserves. I didn't love Him at all before this year. Such a faulty, pathetic excuse for love, adoration, worship - that's all I bring. The bent and twisted remains of the least of His handiwork, destroyed almost past recognition. And He accepts it with joy as if it were the most precious thing I could ever give Him. Because sadly it is. But that is somehow enough for Him. And it blows my mind and overwhelms my soul until I weep because there is nothing else I can do.

Through writing this the anger and frustration at God's eternal unconditional love subsided. I am now simply grateful and okay with that.

I am still broken by it but I think it is a good kind of broken.

1 comment:

bobbie said...

it sounds like the kind of broken that lets the light shine through. beautiful!