Brokenness

I have long since stopped asking God directly for brokenness. I suspect that most people who do don't know what they nay be getting themselves into.

Read about 75% of my posts, and you find a guy trying and failing to come to grips with why he is where he is in life. Cool, calm, or collected I am not, but I play one well at church.

But all too often I go too far. I mistake the burden I carry as worse than those others have. I have never heard "Your dad has cancer." I have never lost a child, or a spouse. Aside from some Jello-like extra baggage, I am in reasonable health. I see well, have a full head of hair, and am a deceiving 6' tall. I have friends I can confide in, a family that loves me, and a roommate that is enough of a geek like me that we can relate well.

I have lost my share of dreams. To be dog-sitting in a house that smells of dog urine while a girl you believed would reciprocate your love in the end gets married is frustrating.

Brokenness for me is not being single. This is just the mirror that shows me how empty I thought my well of faith is. I have moments of noble "I will trust God no matter what." I wish I could say that these came up more often than desperate feelings of acute loneliness and begging God for reprieve.

Once in an embittered retort (wrapped in the cold "logic" I use as a defense when hurt) to another girl I had a crush on, I explained away her rejection of me with a surprisingly-cold "you're just not the sort of person who would want to be a pastor's wife." That remains one of the things I most wish I could take back, in part because the measure I used I feel myself measured against. And I find myself lacking.

For me the cross remains the anchor point in a sea of uncertainty. I know that grace abounds to sinners - to those who have nothing but utter filth to offer God. I know that neither my failures, my weakness, my fighting, my rebellion, my anger, my hypocrisy, my legalisim, my flippancy, nor my utter non-comprehension of the overwhelming majesty of God can separate me from his love.

I dare not proclaim my endless love for God on account of the cross, for my love grows cold. I cannot say that I will trust God through shadow and fear, because I have not. I cannot pledge fealty, because my next thought may be worthy of hellfire. But I can come: weary of the burden of myself that I carry, and find acceptance. And not just a cold non-rejection, but the love of a Father whose son was dead and is now lives.

The cross. The one point at which my blasphemies are shown for the hollow utterances they are; where my dusty well of faith is filled; where my filthy garments are replaced with the very righteousness of God.