God both scares me and reassures me. From my archived notes.
when my mom was a kid, she captured a mole and swaddled it in a towel, hoping it would be her friend. it kept squirming and crying, so she held it tightly in her hands. as it slipped from her grasp, she squeezed it tighter. she didn’t want it to leave and she wanted to love it as her pet, but she squeezed so tightly it suffocated in her palms.
God, is this how you love me? swaddled in Your hands, smothered with love so dense it presses the breath out of me?
i think love, sometimes, is fury: like fire that warms but burns like a sun if you approach too close. i think love, sometimes, is a deluge: pouring from the floodgates of heaven, reservoirs overflowing, springing through cracks in the earth, drowning me. i think love, sometimes, is violent, and i’m terrified of it.
i’m terrified of love that starts soft and morphs into something dangerous: a sweet song erupting into a jack-in-the-box, a dog biting my hand when i try to feed it, a serpent striking when i asked for bread.
it hurts, abba, my body hurts. my flesh festers beneath bandages, the medical tape sticks to my skin, there’s gravel buried in the laceration. it needs air and clean water but God, father, that’s gonna fucking hurt.
to be known is to uncover wounds.
here are my wrists, abba. see the tiny veins peering through thin translucent skin, feel the bird-bones of my fingers. here is my neck, abba. see the pulse of my lifeblood in the muscles holding up my neck. here is my stomach, abba, feel the softness of my vital organs there. here are my eyes, abba. see how they veer from your gaze. here are my lips, abba, see how they tremble; here is my body and my soul, abba, see how it shakes, see how it fails.
the other day, on a chair in my backyard, a small clump of downy feathers stood out starkly from the dark seat. a closer inspection revealed a prone baby bird, so young its skin was jelly around its slitted eyes. if not for the decay, i might have thought it was sleeping.
abba, oh abba, here i lie at your feet; i roll over and expose my belly like a dog. it’s bred into my bones to fear no matter how much you assure me; this trusting is a shivering anxiety, this trusting is that horrible moment when i jump off the diving board and hover in mid-air, this trusting is not violent but pregnant with could-be’s. my head is full of warning sirens, my body full of ringing alarms. i know you’re not going to hurt me, but i don’t believe it. i come to you fighting at every turn, knowing too much and rebelling in search of independence, terrified, unwilling. i think my brain is messed up; all i see in my side-mirrors is emptiness, disguising lurking dangers in my blind spots. maybe it’s not real. this trusting is helpless. this trusting is faith—
oh abba, abba, abba. help my unbelief. i feel like i never will cease praying this prayer. help my unbelief. help my unbelief. help my unbelief.
the father runs down the road to meet his son, hands open, arms embracing. the shepherd searches the wildnerness, rejoices when he finally cradles his lost sheep. a man from Nazareth hangs on a cross, loving the soldier that nailed him there. a baby cries in a feeding trough, the air thick with the scent of manure. fingers smear mud on a blind man’s eyes. an arm wrapped around a child’s waist. a hand taking the hand of a young girl. outside a tomb, tears slip down the face of someone who loved their departed friend.
he’s gentle, so unbelievably gentle, and he’s real and tangible and present. here.
he will never, ever harm me, or let harm come to me.
hold infinite power and the lowliest of the lowly, universes and sub-atomic particles, together in one being. if i go out so far or go down so small it’s all the same. it’s You, You’re there, You always have been.
You can hold me gently with wide hands and a firm embrace, You can show up in white wielding a sword of fire, You are everything to me, for me; you are all power and all tenderness. omnipotent. omnipresent.
and You,
You love me. died for me on a cross, tore curtains in two, poured the holy of holies into my body. for all of us. it’s not so hard to trust You, to serve You, is it then?
vast and safe.
i am overwhelmed. Your love is a deluge.
all glory be to You alone.
In the Silence Between 