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Today on the Mediterranean

 
All I feel here is pain right now. I’m hunting for relief, trying to find out if there’s anyway around where God is leading me. Do I even want this anymore? It’d be so easy to return to Colorado and run around in the mountains. I’m facing the hurt, the real pain of where God could be leading me, and climbing mountains in the United States seems pretty comfortable right now. I’ve thought about it. I’m learning the cost of following Christ. Learning what it means to give everything.

The trouble is I can’t go back anymore. What I experienced then I will never experience again. If I return to the United States, I’ll only end up bored and without purpose and still in pain. I’m not who I was a month ago.

Why the pain? I know where I must go, but feel it’s impossible to get there. There’s no way around, under, or over jumping in the scary ocean of God’s love. I’m afraid of that ocean, afraid that I’ll lose who I am, afraid that I’ll drown. Scared of the waves, the depth, the cold.  Scared I’ll be forgotten, that it’ll be lonely, desolate; the Mediterranean feels like death right now. But I’m being drawn in; I can’t turn back. I can’t even stop being pulled into the waves anymore. I’m dragging my feet through the sand at times, but learning to let go. Because I can’t love and delight until I know that I’m loved and delighted in. There is no way to stop the beckoning. I can try and delay the inevitable. But I know I’m made for this, I know that only death comes if I don’t jump in.

Back in Croatia, I spoke from Song of Solomon about the personal love Jesus wants to have with us. It says, “I belong to my lover, and his desire is for me. Come my lover, let us go to the countryside, let us spend the night in the villages.” (7:10,11). As I spoke, I admitted that this only seems like death and loneliness to me. Being alone in the countryside with Christ only seems like blackness; I don’t know deep within that there is love to be found with Him. Fear of death; is God’s love real; does it really fill the gnawing in my heart or does it make the gnawing worse? Verse 8:5 says, “Who is this coming up from the desert, leaning on her lover?” I think I finally want to come up from the desert leaning on Jesus. And I’m afraid of what it’s going to take for me to get there. But I think now is the time. I think I’m finally desperate enough to let go. I won’t know until I do.

I’m tired of striving. I want to finally be at rest. For the last fifteen years, I can’t remember a time where I’ve known peace, a time where I’ve known rest! I’m done with trying, done with being weak. I think I’m almost ready to give up to know what it feels like to be secure in my relationship with Jesus. Are you?

I NEED TO KNOW THAT I’M LOVED
I NEED TO KNOW THAT I’M LOVED
THE ONLY THING THAT WILL UNLOCK MY HEART IS TO EXPERIENCE YOUR LOVE JESUS