My Brackish Soul - A Lament

Father, You truly never left me.
It didn’t feel that way though, You know.
I felt so incredibly alone.
I clung to all I had known and experienced of You.
That is what held me for so long.
To scream out, to cry out, to literally beg You to intervene and only receive silence?
You were dead to me.
Because if You were alive surely You would get off your throne and do something.
But for a painfully long time You didn’t.
And it was the darkest night of my soul.

What was it like for You to hear my screams and see my tears, to see the shards of life cutting my flesh and yet not move towards me?
Did Your heart break? Was it moved at all? Did my grief pierce your heart as well?
It had to God. It had to.
Because it would have shattered me to ignore my children’s cries or not move on their behalf.
And I’m just a shadow of You as a parent, so surely the Source would feel….something.

 Perhaps it was the silence I needed in order to become.
To become a stronger version of myself.
Perhaps it was the doubt in You because of the silence that allowed all of my former ideas of You, Who You are, what You do, how You Love, to come crumbling down so violently, that only the sacred dust of my life was left behind.
And You re-built me from what was left behind.
You re-made me from the ruins.
From the dust You breathed the breath of Life into me and I became a living soul again.
You became my Teacher and without boundaries of former understandings I could now see You in Your infinite greatness.
You rebuilt me in Your image.

You held me so tight and brought me so close, that it seemed to make up for all those lonely years.
The God I love today can handle the mess and the doubts and the frustrations and the cynicism and the pain of my life and my story.
You don’t ask me to sanitize my faith for You. You don’t call that honoring.
The broken and contrite heart, You never despise.
What honors You is inviting You into all the joy and all the sorrow and all my failures knowing it is Your Love that helps me feel loved in it all.
You don’t just want my whole heart, You want all of me. 
You want everything, even and especially those things open-ended, unresolved, unforgiven, unredeemed, unholy.
You love all of me and offer Your presence to me in all these things, washing me in a Love that conquers it all.
Each an invitation to return and know Your Love for me.
With a heart still sore from the journey, even years later, I thank You for upholding me with a Love I couldn’t even feel or sense or detect at the time.
I thank You for staying close when I accused You of forgetting me.
I cannot imagine the agony You experienced watching me suffer.
I bless Your pain as You have blessed mine.
May we move forward, always hand-in-hand.