An Offering

It's been a few days since I shared from my story...from years gone by...but I wanted to revisit it today. {To recap...it was eight years ago, and I felt a challenge from God to spend time fasting and praying in the prayer chapel where I worked, specifically about my someday husband. After disobeying the follow-through on that plan for a year, I had finally gone to the chapel to pray.

This prayer to God was one of the last things I told you last time...Okay.  I will slow.  I will stop.  And I will look for Your direction.  Teach me to recognize the pillars You plan to use in my life so that I do not miss them and I am not pulled aside by imitation guidance thrown at me by Satan.

***

All of thirty seconds had passed after I promised to follow God’s pillars of guidance before He pulled out the first assignment.  Unsure of where to go after receiving so many object lessons in the first ten minutes of my time in the chapel, I simply asked God this question:

What is holding me back from love?

Oh how God probably rubbed His hands together and rolled up the sleeves of His robe.  How long had He waited to hear that question exit my lips?  And at the same time, I’m sure He shook His head and said, Baby Girl, you do not know what you’re asking.  Here comes your answer…and I’m here to help you fix it.

A couple of years earlier, I’d had a roommate who was pursuing a Masters in Counseling.  Fortunately for her, she lived with a constant science project in her very field.  She could have had so much fun figuring me out – had she not had so many actual clients to focus on for her classes.  But I remember that in one of our many conversations, she suggested to me that perhaps one of my roadblocks to love was that I ran from the very men who could actually love me.  Instead I preferred to harbor “safe” crushes from a distance – often choosing men who would never be realistic options in my world.

And on this day in early May, that thought came back to me, along with the names of some men who frequently saturated my thoughts.  Whether they were unavailable because they had already chosen someone else, because they were unaware of my existence on the planet, because they would never think of me as anything more than a friend, or because they were celebrities {hey, I'm not the only one to fall for those!}, God tenderly reminded me they could not be mine.  Thinking about them, talking about them, wondering about them…none of it would get me any closer to them.  And in fact, it closed my heart to being able to accept a real relationship, should one come my way.

I felt the pain show visibly on my face as specific names and faces crossed my mind.  I’d never thought of it that way before.  Even at Angela’s suggestion that this very problem was an obstacle to me, I’d never thought of it that way before.  I clung to these fantasy ideas of a love that would never be.  I did it to keep from getting hurt, but in turn, it hurt me.  In some way, these thoughts filled my heart and left no room for real love.  Left no room for God to work even if He was ready to do so.  I was asking Him to fill my heart with love, and before He could do anything, I filled it myself – with something so false.  And because it was false, I had to keep adding and adding, until my heart overflowed with false fulfillment.  And God stood to the side unable to find a single spot left for the true love He had for me.

This is the part I love about that moment in the prayer chapel.  God didn’t zap me and say, “You idiot.  These aren’t the right guys.  What are you thinking by liking him?  Hello!  He lives half a world away and doesn’t even know you exist.  And what about that one?  He chose someone else!  Not you!”

No. God didn't do that. He knew those thoughts - wrong, misleading and draining though they had been - were a very real part of my life. Ever so softly, He spoke: Give them to Me.  Let me have these dreams.  Just open your hands and release them to Me.  I will take care of these men.  I will see that they have all they need in the way I choose to fill them.  You can trust Me.  Leave them in My care.

With tears in my eyes, I straightened up in the pew and opened my hands toward Heaven.  I spread my fingers wide until I knew nothing remained within them.  I envisioned God tenderly taking my mind’s images of men I secretly hoped would pursue me, and putting them safely near His heart to care for them with love. 

As I looked forward, arms still outstretched, I noticed the statue.  The front of the chapel has an alcove, and tucked inside it is a life-size statue of Jesus praying in the garden.  He is bent over a large rock, His body utterly spent.  Even from the back of the chapel, the agony on His face is evident.  I studied the torture-ridden frame and realized that moment, when it happened for real, happened so that a moment like I’d just had could also happen. 

Jesus’ pain made possible my offering.  That sin I’d harbored without seeing it for what it was…that block to freedom and love – all of it could be offered into God’s care because of Jesus.  Because He prayed in the Garden.  Because He took the cup.

I’d heard of people feeling a weight picked up from their shoulders when they sought forgiveness, and that day, I knew that sweet release.  I stood from the pew, feeling free to go forward…freed….cleansed.