SSMT: Verse 6

Boy, I will tell you people what: I feel like this week has been one giant hey let's examine Bekah's messed up heart confessional.

If you were in the greater Marion area last night and heard strange cries around 7 p.m.  - it was me. I came home, didn't even take off my boots or my coat, and collapsed on the bed with sobs like I've not cried in a while. {Not gonna lie. I love a good tear duct cleanse and it felt GOOD.} As I heard the cries escaping, I was so glad Ryan wasn't home to hear them in that moment. They were the kind of cries that are equal to throwing up...the sort of thing better done in the privacy of you and Jesus.
 Lest you worry...nothing major is wrong. We are fine, no one is sick, and life is, on the whole, very, very good. But my heart was ugly. Ugly beyond the normal SERIOUSLY!?!!?!?!? yelled at various drivers who dared to cut me off on my commute home.

Ugly in a way that embarrassed me. Ugly with anger and frustration over a variety of tiny annoyances that have piled up and it had to escape out of me somewhere. Tear ducts were the route of choice, it seemed.

I grabbed onto the pillow and cried I hate this feeling! I don't know what to do. Help me.

And here's what I loved. Before God even pressed on me to start spilling the ugly from my heart, He said nothing at all. And it wasn't a silence that made me say "HELLO?? ANYONE THERE?" It was that beautiful, comforting silence that made me feel held...gathered up close to His side...loved despite the lack of holiness oozing from me in that instant.

And when my heart had settled, He said these verses to me. While they are verses I know...they are verses I need to fill myself with right now:

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence, 

and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation.

and uphold me with a willing spirit.

~ Psalm 51:10-12 ~

I whispered the words over and over while my wool coat scratched my arm and my cheek grew cold from tears chilling on the pillow beneath my face. 

I thought back to my desert...dark days when the very act of one breath to the next took deep effort.  In those days, I was grateful. Grateful that the hurt pulled me closer to Him. Grateful to learn what it meant to depend on Him for strength for every task - including showering and pulling a bag of chips out of the cabinet to eat something resembling a dinner.

And today I'm choosing gratitude. I'm choosing to be grateful for that one I've slacked in praying for: the one who continues to treat me as invisible. I'm choosing to be grateful for the annoyances that make me want to scream It's not fair!! - because they also make me scream Jesus! Draw me!

I'm choosing to ask for a clean heart, a right spirit, and His joy. 

Appropriately, as I was writing this post, I flipped over to Twitter for just a second and found someone had retweeted this from Beth Moore...from a couple of days back: "I just feel like some of you younger ones need to hear us older ones say that Jesus really will use every ounce of what you're going through."

In the desert I begged Him to let my journey be worth it. And He has. He is. My prayer holds. Make this season of being recreated, restored, and taught in the secret place...worth every second.