This yoke bends low my head, turns downcast my gaze. The weight of burdens unknown exhaust my shoulders to a position of wearied submission.
I've run the race, haven't I? Fought valiantly this war waged against my soul for 9 long months now.
9 months.
Time enough to conceive and birth new life.
Where's this long awaited birth? Instead of cradling precious new life in my hands; the proposed fruit of this strenuous growing of the seed sown into the core of my being at the conception of this journey.
I find myself in agonizingly drawn out labor pains. I pant, I heave, I push to the fullest of my strength. Yet my efforts seem to fail me.
Here's my heart Lord. Laid bare, naked, raw before you; that's been my cry this whole journey long. Let me serve up my raw and bleeding heart on a platter for you, go on, dig even deeper with your scalpel.
Deeper still right?
Why do I resent this? I signed up for this didn't I?
The minute I said yes to dropping the fig leaves, my very essence was exposed to piercing examination. I stand naked, bare, fully in view of the searching eye.
Search me God, and know my heart.
Search me…
I recoil, I duck for cover, I grab my pulsing bleeding heart off the examination table.
Call off the search, I scream from the bushes. There's nothing here worth recovering. Keep my heart in the cold case files; it's buried too deep in the rotting earthen soil from which it came. Let it decay, I plead, as life gushes from the fresh incision flowing blood into the depths of the earth.
Pain too great, depths too vast. Strength eroding.
Feeble arms and weak knees.
Feeble arms lay limp in the muddy earth. Weary from wrestling in strength faiding quicker than the flash of a falling star.
Hands lay unclenched, dry blood caked under broken finger nails, after clawing at the perceived enemy whose been ripping open poorly sown up wounds.
Wounds sown up with dental floss and a rusty needle by my own week hands.
Attempting to apply fig leaves to avoid nakedness. Thinking being clothed by makeshift garments portrays beauty.
Ashes crumble to the ground as the pursuer of radiant beauty burns away the chafe I've covered my heart with.
Into the furnace goes my heart. The furnace of affliction. The flames curl and crackle around my still dripping heart. The blood sprinkles the coals, igniting even brighter flames.
As the fire dances around the very essence of me, like a Phoenix, out of the ashes I rise.
The coals of the fire still glowing. Illuminating a beating, pulsing heart. Birthed out of the fires of vulnerability, gasping with new life. Crying out with lungs breathed anew.
Deep CRIES out to deep.
I bend.
Knees bowed in piles of ash. The ashes of fig leaves once wrapped to conceal the gaping holes of attempts to sow up my own flesh.
Needle handed over, heart laid bare. Wrapped in robes of righteousness.
Search me God, and know my heart.
Know my heart…
9 months of incubation.
My being cradled in the potters hands.
Into the furnace, out of the furnace, into the furnace again.
Mold, shape, chip away, form, chisel, burn away, break, re-make. My form was never hidden from His sight, even in the depths. His ever piercing gaze, the eye of the beholder, ever upon me. Perfecting His grandest masterpiece ever conceived in the depths of His unfathomable imagination.
Breath of new life breathed into His newly formed creation. The tender touch of my lovers lips meet my breathless mouth. With love so powerful it causes my motionless chest to rise and fall in rhythm with His beating heart newly placed under my rib cage.
I awake.
Pulsating with fresh blood coursing through my veins. Blood that cleanses and purges all the dross left in my body from the refiners fire.
My eyes flutter open, light blinding yet slowly revealing true love returning my gaze. The purest love ever to behold me.
My new heart throbs and swells with the joy of being fully known by the one who formed the heart He now cradles in His hands.
I am laid bare, in the most romantic sense. My lover seeing me fully exposed, all parts of me no longer hidden.
He simply yet profoundly sings over this new life…'It is very good.'
Crown of creation is declared over me.
'You have stolen my heart my daughter my bride,' whispers my beloved creator. I've waited 9 long months in eager anticipation to meet you fully alive. My daughter, in you I am well pleased.
Now arise!
