Come Lord Jesus

The question is not Will your heart ever feel desperate need? but What will you do with your desperate need when you feel it? Cause you'll experience desperate need. Everyone does.

Last night was a miserable restless night. A nightmare double feature where every one who has ever been cruel, unkind or rejecting in my life made a cameo appearance. I awoke feeling exhausted and beleaguered. A beggar soul. Bereft and alone. Despair weighed heavy. It was a battle for my heart.

Delighted Husband knew just what to do. He stood in front of me, half polished businessman and half sleepy husband. Thank God he hadn't put his shirt on yet. He drew me to his chest, and enfolded me in his arms. Cradled my head against his chest, his palm blessing my face with protective affection. And he prayed. He prayed for Jesus to defend me from the lies and tell me the truth about who I really am. "Yes" I whispered. "yes" The rejection and sorrow of the dreams fought for airtime on the movie screen in my mind. "tell me Baby. You tell me the truth" and so he did. He held me and caressed my hair and told me simple truth about my redemption. Who I really am. The reality the beauty of my redeemed heart. The good truth.

After Delighted Husband prayed, I had the strength to get out of bed and suit up for battle. I took my show on the road. Literally. I put on my running gear and hit the road. Ready to sweat it out. To let all the negativity be washed away by sunshine and sweat and worship. I scrolled through the songs on my mp3 player till I got to my favorite prayer. The one where John Eldredge prays over all the women at the Captivating retreat. As I walked and stretched and sweated, John did battle on my behalf. It felt so good. I breathed in good air and breathed out "yes. yes. yes Lord Jesus" agreeing with the prayer and renouncing the lies. This went on till John was done praying, a good ten minutes or so.

The noisy toxic chatter now silenced, I switched over to music. Chris Tomlin, God love him, Chris Tomlin was right there singing in my headphones:
What can take a dying man
raise him up to life again
what can heal the wounded soul
what can make us white as snow
what can fill the emptiness
what can mend our broken-ness?
mighty awesome wonderful
is the holy cross
where the lamb lay down his life
to lift us from the fall
mighty is
the power of the cross.

My heart and my muscles warmed up. The sun on my face and the trickle of sweat between my shoulder blades and the stretching moving rhythm of my legs as I picked up speed...all felt like mercy and life. I was waking up from a bad bad dream.

It was a glorious workout.

Stretching and cooldown was paradoxically more about my spirit even as I focused my attention on stretching my muscles. When VineyardUK sang, it felt like a personal invitation, just for me.
all who are thirsty
all who are weak
come to the fountain
dip your heart in the streams of life
let the pain and the sorrow
be washed away
on the waves of this mercy
as deep cries out to deep
we sing
come Lord Jesus come
wontcha come wontcha come Lord?
come Lord Jesus come
come Lord Jesus come

As I sang, I closed my eyes and visualized that place in my heart. That empty lonely place left rejected and alone by all those memories I'd dreamed about last night. I pictured that gap in my heart. And I sang with all the breath in my body:
come Lord Jesus come
wontcha come wontcha come Lord?
come Lord Jesus come
come Lord Jesus come

He did. Oh my God, y'all. He did. I felt those gaps in my heart filling up. The anxiety and insecurity melted away. That hole in my heart where I used to stuff chocolate. Oh my God. I focused on my need and sang out "come Lord Jesus" and he did. He really did.

Oh friends. It is so much easier to be kind when my nagging awful need is dealt with. So much easier to be kind to husband and children and customers and friends. So much easier to be kind, actually kind to my self. So much easier to be the sensuous generous wife I truly desire to be.

So take a lesson, ya'll.
When that place in your solar plexus is so empty is staggers you, cry out "Come Lord Jesus" and he will. He truly will. -SW

Allies Til Death, Part Two

for I have said before that you are in our hearts to die together and to live together.

2 Corinthians 7:1-4 "1 Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. 2 Make room for us in your hearts; we wronged no one, we corrupted no one, we took advantage of no one. 3 I do not speak to condemn you, for I have said before that you are in our hearts to die together and to live together. 4 Great is my confidence in you; great is my boasting on your behalf. I am filled with comfort; I am overflowing with joy in all our affliction."

What does this have to do with marriage?
Plenty.

Who else? Above all other humans, who else? In all relationships in my life, none other should characterize this kind of supercharged dedication more than my relationship with Delighted Husband.

So lemme just say it right here and now: "Baby, you are in my heart to live together and to die together. I choose you above all other humans. We are Allies Till Death."

This is where the sweet abandon in the bedroom comes from. We don't just like each other. We're not just attracted to each other. We don't just tolerate each other. We don't just love each other. We are allies till death. This kind of supercharged dedication is the mattress we rest and play on. This is where nudity becomes the sacred naked. When each touch, every whispered scream, each sensation is an affirmation and celebration of our alliance, that's when God's glory falls all around us, turning our bedroom into a cathedral built for two. -SW

I am filled with comfort

One of the most poisonous things about poison is not what it gives you but what it keeps you from. Several kinds of poison (I learned from a forensic educational whodunit on cable) several kinds of poison bind with the oxygen receptors in your cells. Meaning the parts of your cell that are supposed to receive oxygen are binding to something else, something not oxygen, something not what they need, something other than what they were designed by God to bind to. It's not so much what the poison gives you, it's what the poison keeps you from...the thing designed by God to bring you Life. The thing you were designed by God to so desperately need and so freely receive. Like oxygen. Like love. Like friends.

One of the most poisonous things about the childhood sexual abuse I endured was that I experienced trauma at an age when I was way too young for appropriate self-comfort. I was not differentiated enough to be capable of appropriate self-comfort. The adults who I wanted to comfort me didn't know how.

I shopped for comfort at the only store that was open to a young child: the refrigerator.

So those receptors in my soul that were designed to bind to friends to bind to loving people, those receptors in my soul were binded to food. It was easy really. And it's easy as an adult. I've never had a Hershey bar tell me they weren't available or that my need was invalid. People are problematic some times. Course they are. Good Lord! Look at me! But food becomes poison when it blocks the receptor for the love and human interaction I truly need.

God in his infinite mercy allowed circumstances and my own heart to push me to a place of need that forced me to reach out to my friends. To tell the truth about where I really was and to ask them to love me and pray for me anyway. I have tears in my eyes just remembering yesterday. It's still that fresh. It's still that powerful. The oxygen receptors in my soul are getting real honest-to-God oxygen instead of the poisonous fake. Oh My God!

I'm sending this out to all my friends who gave my soul oxygen yesterday. Who heard me in my dark vulnerable moment and treated me with great care:
The biggest blessing/lesson in all of this is that I have substituted food for friends for most of my life. And by vulnerably telling the truth about where I'm at to a few of my friends has been a profound experience. My telling and their responding is in itself a huge antidote because it makes food as a friend irrelevant. Thanks for being a part of that.

And is this experience of feeling so profoundly loved by my friends, there's a scripture I memorized 14 years ago that I just now truly understand.

2nd Corinthians 7:4 "Great is my confidence in you, great is my boasting on your behalf. I am filled with comfort. I am overflowing with joy—in all my affliction."

I used to stammer that scripture to myself, sniffing and crying during a bout of loneliness and pain, crying out to God and telling Him that my confidence was in Him and telling Him I expected Him to fill me with comfort because I was being a brave girl and quoting scripture through my tears. It didn't work. Today I understand why.

Reading the context, I see that Paul was not crying out to God Almighty in a moment of solitary prayer. Paul was talking to his friends. His real flesh-and-blood friends.

2 Corinthians 7:1-4 "1 Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. 2 Make room for us in your hearts; we wronged no one, we corrupted no one, we took advantage of no one. 3 I do not speak to condemn you, for I have said before that you are in our hearts to die together and to live together. 4 Great is my confidence in you; great is my boasting on your behalf. I am filled with comfort; I am overflowing with joy in all our affliction."

He calls his friends 'beloved' and asks them to 'make room for me in your hearts'. Oh. My. God.

I'm beginning to see that when you know someone well enough to call them 'beloved' and you have the oxygenating experience of someone making room for you in their heart, you will be filled with comfort, you will be overflowing with joy even though you are you smack dab in the middle of great affliction.

Today, I'm sucking in the oxygen and poison seems not only beatable but downright irrelevant. -SW