I used to desire to desire you.
I used to sing that song, “Set a fire down in my soul,” thinking that my fire wasn’t burning hotly enough. I was weighed down by guilt. I thought you expected more of me. I thought you wanted me to figure out what perfection was and then attain that in order to please you. No matter how much I did for you, I felt like it wasn’t enough.
Now the fire is here, and it’s consumed all of my calculations. I am inside of you, the living flame of love. I forget what the old way was like.
In this is love: Not that I loved you, but that you loved me and gave me everything you have, everything you are. I am my beloved’s and he is mine.
When I started coming up the pass, my limbs felt lighter. The gravity shifted like I had left the atmosphere. You brought me to a lavish house overlooking a valley of aspens, the valley where Robbie imparted innocence to me. I took a hot shower and then fell asleep beneath thick blankets, a space heater by my bed. I awoke to a golden flood of dawn torrenting across the valley. I immediately went to the window and dropped to my knees, weeping.
That moment would have been enough to sustain me for months, if not years. The fourteen-hour drive would have been more than enough. I think of Corrie ten Boom and what’s coming, and how you sustained her with memories of the Beje, with her sister’s sweater. I drank these cups of beauty like the sweetest wine. You yourself are enough, but then to give me these things? I record them on the memory card of my heart, and I lock them away in a treasure chest.
But then you kept going. Oh, you wouldn’t stop. I walked upstairs and found a book written by the daughter of the house, a book about the garden. I opened it and couldn’t stop the tears. You see my pain. You are touching me. And then I got to ride into town with the Jameses. Robbie played his summer driving CD loudly enough to fill the car. We soared down the mountain roads with violins and the voice of Amanda Cook.
Then Kelsey Aylard said, “That angle. Right there.”
She was pointing at the cliffs as we passed them. Then she showed us a photo on her phone, a photo of Mount Arbel in Israel. They were identical. Our cliffs in Kremmling and the mountain where you gave the Great Commission. In the photos, they couldn’t be told apart.
What are you doing? I breathed deeply, ingesting glory. This is so other. It’s you.
The countless things you’ve always condensed into mere hours here. Time slows down and you fill it more. But this is a greater measure. This is holy.
All of that happened before I even made it to church, and you kept going all day, a steady stream. You are exact. I would be closing my eyes and plugging my ears to say that you’re not fully orchestrating every moment. All through the day, until the moment I went to bed, you directed the scenes. Heaven’s frames. I am breathless and speechless.
You said, seek first my kingdom and all these things will be given unto you, but I had no idea it would mean this. And we’re only one day in.