What She Would Like To Do

...is write about Return of the King. No spoilers, just about the overall Trilogy Tuesday experience.

What is on her heart, however, is a deep, dark, gritty truth and awe that only one King can claim.

The past week or so, I have been reviewing the past year of my life and reveling in the wonder and the pain it has revealed. A year wrought with mind-warping struggles, self-destructive behaviors and blessed tears of redemption-- over and over and over again.

A year of journal entries such as these:

It's amazing how life passes by and history repeats itself. Lessons learned are relearned, this time faster, this time much more painfully slower than ever.

It seems I cannot love you anymore, and yet as hard as I try, I am unable to love you any less. Fly. Be released and free me from your cage.

Oh were I like a feathered dove, and innocence had wings. I’d fly and make a long remove from all these restless things!

Tossing and turning. Round about everything. Fly. Fly. Free me with your wings. Soar across the stars as I slumber through the deepest seas. Set me free. Free me. Set me free.

I cried throughout most of worship, and not tears and sobs of lament at my guilt, but joy and conviction commingled streaming down my cheeks into a smile of one who is ever a sinner and a saint, waiting for the day when I will be made completely and wholly perfect in Christ and may awaken fully to His Glory, while crumpled in His grip, unable to bear even the weight of my own shoulders much less the burden I have so stubbornly struggled to wear. I look to His promises, look to His Word, look to His cross, He is ever there. I don't know if that made sense, but that is my heart-- and so scared am I to share with anyone what might be inside, that I have forgotten to love and to be loved as His bride.

It's days like these my eyes barely open, my face is swollen and soiled. Stained by choices poorly taken, worn by trials, severely shaken. Its days like these when I could fly away home. Run away home, lose my way and end up in a home I created.

And if I try hard enough I could lose myself, start all over as someone else. Someone less tortured, someone less tried, someone less prodded and singed in the fire. Someone less than who you meant me to be. You press me to be so much more. Would you still want me if I were someone less?

Would you love me less?
In an hour this late, have I really the option to choose another way? In an hour this dark could there be any rays? In an hour this silent is there anything left to say? With scrapping hands and fingers so raw, I claw to climb out of this mess myself, to uphold myself, to do anything myself but let you make me more myself. All my life I've settled for less. But you want to make me more.

The path of righteousness is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day. ~Proverbs 4:18

After all of this grey weather we've had, this verse strikes a particular chord with me. Light is one of those things we take for granted. Thanks to electricity, we have access to light at the tip of our fingers. Even at night we have light in the form of flashlights, street lamps and headlights.

But there is a distinct difference between the hum and glow of fluorescent lights and the brilliant warmth of the dazzling sun.

So too is there a vast difference between the empty promises of false idols and the awesome wonder of the Heavenly Son. While one is like silver plate on a nickel base, the other is pure gold with a diamond sheen: much like the band the Lover has placed on the hand of His beloved, His body, His bride. And yet, even that ring, brilliant and symbolic as it may be, is nothing compared to the radiant glory beaming from the face of the Lover as He watches His beloved walk down the aisle. And she too stares not at the congregation surrounding her, but at her goal, the One who will have her and hold her eternally; her true love.

Too often I have been caught surveying the faces of the congregation, untrue to the One standing at the end of the aisle, too caught up in my own beauty at the moment, not realizing that any beauty I may have comes not from me, but from being loved by one True Lover.

A year ago today I wrote these words:

I never meant for you to see the anger, the cold, black malice I hide. But sometimes it just won't abide. Tears always follow fits, both yours and mine. You know I never meant to make you cry.

But I'm so angry that I want to cry all the time. And I don't know where the person I was has gone to, but the me who took her place seems like a shadow of the shadow of the shadow of her. And oh how she used to shine. But the lights now have faded and the winter's set in. And the me that's left can't escape the grey and the clouds that hide the sun and bring no snow to purify this dingy ground, and wash the world in white. And oh how the crystals would shine when their makers let them loose and moved on eastward to release the sun for at least one bright day. And brighter than a covered day is a living night clear and cold. When the shimmering slopes and icicles mirror brave Orion's bow.

And Today I write this:

I am blessed and at peace. I am whole because I am with You and You are ever with me. You have freed me from "safe" love because, by allowing me to be able to be hurt and broken, you have allowed me to love all the more greatly, and be all the more greatly loved. Although I know that I will never truly be healed until that day You call me home; and although I may long for that day with the groaning of all creation, I no longer wish for the end of today. For today I have with You as well as yesterday and tomorrow. I now know that I need not wait for the veil of night to set on my days in this world to see with Your light. For I have seen darkness and I have felt the icy chill of emptiness, but no cavernous waste exists beyond Your ability to sate.