Here I Am

I find myself wanting to write on this blog is for you, the reader, to like me, maybe even love me. I've told a few people that mine is an anti-blog. It seems a safe thing to say--if you happen to like it, then I can tell myself you like the real me. If you happen to hate it, then it's because it doesn't fit a genre. Summary of the above babble: I've been hiding from you. I want my life, even snapshots of my life, to fit into a box with a neatly-tied bow. I want to be able to explain the ache away. If I can explain it, there must be hope. If there's a reason I ache, then there's a possibility it will go away. This blog began after a breakup, but the breakup is not the reason I ache. I have always ached, and this breakup just allowed me to glimpse it again.

I'm a pro at coverup. I have created an organism of self-protection that lives my life for me. It looks at myself in the mirror and makes decisions about how I should look and act. It surveys the opinions around me and picks one that is unique enough to be noticed but popular enough that it will not meet rejection. Vulnerability feels like suicide. Rejection, a death. I have a deep desire to be needed and wanted that no human I have yet met has the ability to fulfill. I love my cat more when she is loving me. I love my roommate so that she will turn around and love me. Part of me tells you this so that maybe you will love me. But you can't. This ache, this desire, this powerful longing is for a God that aches for me and desires for me to draw near to Him. And then I find myself reading His Word hoping I won't ache. I try to listen and talk to Him so that He will relieve this disappointment and confusion. I seek after the Lover of my soul because I want something from Him. Can't I just want to know Him? Can't I just want to be close to Him? Can't I just want to experience Him? Walk with Him through the ache? Why am I so desperate to be without pain? I used to think the Marines' advertising slogan was craziness or masochism--Pain is evidence you're alive. But it's making sense now. The more I realize how disappointed I am with myself and people in my life, the more I admit to myself that I cannot make it okay, the more I am coming to realize how deep my need for Christ is. I'm scratching the surface of how desperately I desire to know Him and how little I really know about love.

To you, my friends, I must apologize for my selfish and manipulative motivations that I call love. I do desire to seek Him, be fulfilled by Him only, and thus be able to love you more truthfully and completely.

To live as a Christian is to struggle. Jesus Christ died as God's only begotten vulnerable Son. To live the vulnerable life is to die to the dangerously subversive yet subtle sin of self-protection.

(If this subject resonates with you, you might be interested in reading Inside Out by Dr. Larry Crabb.)