Ferocity Spells Things Like Disaster

I suppose based on my last post you have gathered I don't hold myself in the highest of regards.  (Though in an aside, I must inform you that no one else can be me.  I am 100% me and although I need very much work, I am the only person who can impact people the way I impact them.  In that sense, I am irreplaceable.)  I think, again, I just keep realizing how rotten I am--how predisposed I am to wickedness, to selfishness.

I basically came to the place tonight where I realized I don't really love that many people.  I think the only person I truly love (in the selfless sense of the word, in its purest form) is Ray.  I give of myself every day to that man.  I find myself delighted in his every movement, captured by his every word.  He is flawed and boy, do I love him incorrectly, but I would do whatever it takes to make him smile.  I would search the ends of the earth for whatever his heart desired.  I would give and love and pour until there was nothing left because he gives me life.  He makes me feel worthy and lovely and adored and precious and significant.  But more than all these things, he sees and has seen the wretch I am and can be, and he does not lie when he tells me he loves me.  It's so pure, that look in his eyes, when he says it.  He hides nothing from me, pretends nothing, forces nothing.  It is as much a part of him as is the rhythm of his beating heart, the lifting and falling of his chest.  All this I see.  All this I know.  All this I feel with him.

But it ends with him.

I do not love anyone else as much as I love that man.  I suppose it isn't fair to compare since I am romantically in love with Ray... But nevertheless, I am loveless in almost every other way.  I have seen glimmers in my busy, planner-filled life.  I see it in the message I send to a friend, encouraging her in her true worth.  I see it when I stand next to a co-worker and lift her up, tell her this, too, shall pass.  I see it in the letter I write that reminds someone that their dreams are worth fighting for, worth chasing at all costs and that they're doing it.

But they are passing.  They are like a soft breeze in summer, bringing only slight reprieve but for a moment and then drifting away.  You find yourself quickly forgetting there was ever a breeze at all and all that's left is the repressing, heavy unforgiveable heat.  It bears down on you reminding you there is nothing but you and it and there will never be release.  It will always be this season.  You will forever wander in the desert.

I suppose it could come across that loving people brings some self-satisfaction, some self-soothing.  And you know what?  It absolutely does.  Not in the way that I seek it out because it makes me feel better about me, but that when I reach out and touch someone, it reminds me of all the times I needed that or received that and it changed my life when it happened.  That's what motivates me to really want to love people--that feeling of connecting with someone.  You see that look in their eyes, that profound gratefulness and you may as well be looking in a mirror because you've been there.  You've been at the bottom of that blackened hole, crying out for grace, for hope with nothing but the echo of your own voice, mocking you in reply.  And when someone reaches down their hand to you, no matter how small or large of a gesture, they may as well be heaven sent.

I remember a time when I regularly reached or dove into these pits, seeking the souls of those whom had given up.  I remember when I had so much hope, so much love, so much joy that I was practically ready to come apart at the seams with it.  Ironically and truthfully, it happened to be the most broken season of my life, the time I was most alone, most forgotten.

I don't know exactly what it was that made me give of myself so much.  It was never to an end or with end.  I was filled, always being filled.  Each day had its own dawn.  It was a renewable resource that came at no price.  It was truly daily bread.

I find myself barely eating at all these days.  Of course, I mean that figuratively.  I am as the Israelites, stowing manna in my tent to save for later, only to find it riddled with maggots in the morning.  I am disobedient. I am lazy.  I am selfish and so easily forget the promises of God, the miracles He has performed in front of my very eyes.  And so, I stow bread and doubt and grumble.  I have become the very bible characters I hate reading about.

God, I want to love again.  There was a time I wanted you to show me what that meant regardless of what it would cost me.  Of course, that was a time when I had nothing left to lose. It had all been taken from me--my dignity, my identity, my purity, my reality... all wrenched from beneath me like a cheap, non-magic carpet and then rolled up in it like the corpse I was, ready to be deposited to the nearest dump.  It was glorious.  I understand why those who have nothing are so ready and willing to give even more of themselves to you and for you.  They are so unattached to their lives or things because they have nothing left to lose.  And I, at this point, can lose so much.  And I suppose that is the problem right there, that I even see it that way.

I want to love radically.  I want to be taken up in it like a great wave and then crashed on the surf.  I want it to be violent and real.  I want to get sand and salt water in my eyes and ears and nose.  I want to choke on it. I want to be invaded by it, overwhelmed with it, overcome by it.  I want to show people, really show them through loving them what it's like to get taken away in a wave, to feel the ebb and flow of the current, to be a part of something so teeming with life.  I want people to feel the magic of what it means to be so deeply and irrevocably loved that it begins to change the way they see themselves.

I do want this.  I want it for Ray. I want it for my family.  I want it for those I once loved with a ferocity.  I want it for those I encounter even if for a moment.  Help me love, Abba, as I am a poor, cracked vessel that often leaks and has forgotten its purpose rather easily.  I want to love your way.  Because it is the purest example I can find of selflessness and of hope.  And because it got deep in my heart and it changed the way I saw myself and saw the world...for the better.

And I don't think I'll ever look back on life when I'm old and gray or on my death bed and regret having loved people truly and deeply and purely...

And that's really all I need to know before I dive into the swell...