I have heard many times that a person's first perspective gained or understood about God goes back to their relationship with their father. After 20 I think it may even turn in to who or what I viewed my boss as.
I thought since I always trusted God was not the boogie man, the man with the green face and black top hat, the men in my childhood through my teens- that I never needed to really think about if I believed that he wanted me. It was it was it was that God loved me. The end.
I don't remember what came up recently that had made me ponder this and realize I, for the first time (I think) was not sure if God liked me or wanted me. It all made sense when you go to the root of abandonment, blah, blah... but that whole thing gets old, doesn't it?
I just knew somewhere deep inside where I hide my pink shoes- where I want to hug God... that I had. I had been left, maybe like you. But I had not been left by God.
I remember the Thanksgiving that I met Ken. I didn't realize what I was doing until I was on that front porch ringing the doorbell. My heart became a sinking cork in my gut. He gave me a doll that said, "Daddy loves his little girl" on a block she was holding. It was pink. It was funny.
I remember asking him how can you love something and never even send a card? He had answers, always did, never the same, never the truth.
I came to realize he was leaving because he was wounded. Who was I to expect something from the wounded?
I think it's easy for us to say that we are the wounded. And we are. But wounds don't have to leave us jaded and dull and angry and bitter and alone with no sense of humor. I will say it again... a pink doll with a pink block that said, "daddy loves his little girl." I was 15. 15.
Anyway...I never hoped for my scars to disappear or to shrink. I think our hearts grow bigger around the gaping holes until the space just doesn't feel as large. But there are some hurts I think that never change shape or size; and I don't think they are always meant to. It's up to me if I allow my heart to grow around them.
So, does God want me? The question was like a wallflower.
I didn't ask it with a victimized heart- I asked it with a heart that realized maybe I should understand why I would ask that question at all.
And so I pictured a man, who let me spit in his face. Who handed me weapons and let me plunder his side. I pictured a man who let me beat all my demons against his chest, inside and against his hands...who saw me on my stomach sick in the middle of my storms in the middle of my nights and all those cruel men who kept me there, and I pictured Ken who can forget his daughter's birthday and who had a horrible taste in dolls (if there is such thing as a good one), and the man that I had bloodied and beaten beyond recognition said, "I want you. You are my beloved. I will not leave you. I have not left you." And he allowed me to hit him- again.
This is Jesus.
He is not the sign on the street corner, he is not the man the left us, he is not ourselves, he is not our emotions, he is not a stranger...
He is not our Ken.
He lives on the floor with us, he wrote our birthdays, he loves us in our darkness, he wants the drunk man on the corner that has probably not even had someone ask him his name in months, the girl who had the abortion, the man that lives in prison, the men that keep girls in a storm on their stomach...he wants all-of-it. He does not cause heartache. No, no, no. After I broke his heart he said to me, "Baby (he calls me that), I still want you. I don't care if you are late, I don't care if you are clean, ashamed, or wrong. I don't care if you are what's left."
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