Eight billion stories unfolding toward you. Eight billion shards of your light. And yet I walk through my life feeling like you’re curiously pleased with this one.
Each morning, I either wake up with all-consuming satisfaction or holy dissatisfaction. Both coexist, but each morning I can only mostly be aware of one; I’m a small frame. The all-consuming satisfaction feels like a hot furnace of victory, celebration, and laughter. The dissatisfaction is a gnawing starvation on the brink of nausea.
But it’s holy. It, too, consumes. I must have more of you. I must see this distance closed. I must be one with the cloth from which I was cut. What are these foxes? We will rid them together. Is it me? Is it you? Is it our enemy? I cannot rest until I find that resting place for you within my heart, the one you desire.
For I have fallen in love with a man who is expertly formed for me, and I for him. The freckles in our eyes are mirror images, perfectly aligned. He advances into my heart daily, as far as I let him, and it is in this letting that I find final satisfaction. There is no stone he passes unturned. It’s his favorite thing to do, to dwell deeper, move in farther. I know, within myself, when there is a space he is about to occupy. I can feel the pressure shifting. The restlessness won’t last long. I just relax and surrender, and he breezes into that space I didn’t even know existed.
I sit in the armchair and stare out at the mesa. There is anxiety, there is vulnerability, there is frustration in my chest. My mind is at war with my heart. None of my feelings are logical. I am so uncomfortable, but I sit and stay in this with you, sensing that it’s incense. There’s something so very human about this that I think you define as holy.
You are so strangely pleased. I ask you, why this? Of all the things I could offer you, this is what you value most? The wrestlings of my hopes and fears?
You laugh. What else can you offer me, exactly?
I smile back and nod. As though you were served by human hands.
This basement bedroom is littered with the trail of a bridegroom. A half-eaten box of Pop-Tarts, a jar of creatine powder, a stack of books by Bill Johnson and Sean Feucht, some dirty socks, and a spray of photos and cards from a beautiful woman. This was Tyler Scholl’s summer hideout. The photos and cards are filled with Joy’s face and handwriting. There are stones, paintings, and a feather on the windowsill, certainly keepsakes from memories that marked the path to their wedding. Funny how ordinary things become so holy when fused into the fabric of romance.
I just feel like it’s that way with you. You experience nostalgia with me. Each moment is so precious to you because it’s so finite. The reeling within my heart as I sit in an armchair is something I can only offer you during this very short, fleeting chapter of the story. Soon you’ll be coming on the clouds. I think that in your immense, divine majesty, you actually delight in touching small things with me. I actually think that you looked forward to the day you would be conceived in Mary’s womb. You had so much fun creating us; you still enjoy dwelling inside us, experiencing everything in a very human way.
When I drove home from the women’s retreat last September, I tied pieces of cloth to my rearview mirror. I held them as I drove, to remember. You held them with me. It was both small and big to you. Because you’re in love with me.
It’s why you’re so pleased with my life. This is one that you can really move within the way you want to. Each day I wake with dissatisfaction, I know it’s because you’re about to claim more of my heart. I know this is your deepest desire. So my heart responds willingly to your moving.
I wonder, sometimes, why I am rare among eight billion in this way. It saddens me that you don’t receive nearly as much of these human hearts as you long for. But I understand their hesitation. This man is wild. He’s untamed. His movings seem dangerous on the surface. But they are safe, and they satisfy.
Up here, we are all like this. Not just surrendering what’s required in order to move forward in a kingdom of doing, but intimately acquainted with your softest callings to our deep. When there is distance, we feel it, and we welcome the rushing flood that follows. We seek oneness in every way with you. We are in love with the wild one.
Dave walks into the kitchen. I rise from the armchair and hug him good morning. “How’s your heart?” he asks. It doesn’t matter that it’s 7:15 am and he’s on his way out to fix a baler. It’s what both of us are aware of first thing in the morning. Our hearts within yours.
I ask him back, and he tells me without hesitation that he’s seeking rest. So beautiful to you, these hearts that withhold nothing. We don’t compartmentalize the frustrations in order to function. The path toward you is through these tumblings of the heart, not around them. They are your inheritance.
Dave drives off on his ATV. He will spend the day with you, working on the ranch while you work on his heart. It’s your only agenda.
Evan, Kristian, and Daemen spill down the stairs in cowboy boots, then run out the garage to feed chickens. A generation of whole-hearted ones is rising up from this place. A pleasing fragrance to the King.