There I poured out my heart before God. I told Him in all honesty what I was feeling - tired, weak, and insufficient - and where I had been that week - sometimes clinging onto Him for dear life, other times feeling like I was slowly letting go of the last shards of my hope in Him. I scribbled out my fears and my prayers. I got absolutely real and honest with Him, maybe more than I ever have before. I told Him, "You've given me strength for the battle, peace when it makes no sense, songs and verses just when I needed them..but I keep telling You - with my cries and shouts, prayers, thoughts, wishes, hopes, desires - that all I want is for this battle to be over. How long until I lose all will to fight?"
And then I sank to that lowest, deepest place. That place I've been afraid to go. No disguises, no pretenses, no wrapping it up and tying it with a pretty little bow. No... I poured it all out - the desperation and the fears. I told Him what I've felt on and off in my heart these past several days but have been too afraid to voice: that if the road ahead included that - that particular suffering again...I wasn't sure I wanted to keep walking with Him. The thought of giving up on Him did pass through my mind even as I didn't know what it would look like for me if I did.
I had been through the suffering once. And I had seen His Love and provision for me in more ways than I could count. But to go through it again, with all its mental, emotional, spiritual, physical pain? To experience that dark night again? To circle back around to the same "setback"?
No, God. Just don't let that happen. How. could. You.
But even as I sat in my car crying (I guess it was for the best I wasn't sitting in a coffee shop), the unexpected happened.
His Love broke through.
I saw Him in that moment looking straight into the wretched, horrible darkness of my heart...and loving me anyway.
The floodgates opened. The light broke through. And suddenly I found myself able to choose what I couldn't before: surrender...hope...openness towards Him. Face-to-face with His Love, how could I choose any other way except the one with Him?
He made it crystal clear, what He had been revealing to me layer after layer through the last weeks and months, even years: Because of my unbelief in His Love for me, I had vainly tried to grasp for control and had lived like an orphan lacking the care of a good and trustworthy father. This in turn led me down a path of constant worry and hopelessness about my future as I looked to myself instead of to Him for the security, assurance, provision, and love that I had been created to receive.
But, by His grace and work in my heart, I could again choose hope, saying with the psalmist David: "I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!" (Psalm 27:13)
This is where my clenched fists open up to become hands lifted in awe and worship and praise...hands laid open in quiet, humble surrender. This is where my walls fall down and become a bridge between Him and me. This is where my heart of stone becomes a heart of flesh, waiting for and anticipating all the good things He wants to bring my way.
Even as I turned towards Him in that moment, I realized that my "great" constancy and faithfulness to Him was not to thank for this decision to repent. No, it was the culmination of a thousand grace-filled moments...circumstances that had broken me and my framework for life down piece by piece...answered prayers of friends and family members who had asked on my behalf for hope and for the gift of a soft heart...and above all, the stunning wonder of coming face-to-face with God's undeniable, unrelenting Love for me.
I see it so clearly now: Hope is the way forward for me. Not wishful thinking. Not just "trying harder." No...true hope that's built on the sure foundation of His Love, His nature, His promises, His goodness, His character, His faithfulness.
It's here I stand by the grace of God...praying, "Keep me, Lord. Keep me...don't let me go."
And I can believe that He will keep me...for His mercies are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness.