God Alone

I've been anguishing all day. I'm still running from God. STILL running.

I went for a walk in the desert before dinner. I went alone and found a trail that led off of the main trail, through a little valley.

In the very center of these two small mountains was a chair made of stones. I guess someone thought it was a good place to just sit.

So I sat. Alone.

And I wrestled with God. I kept heaving this unbelievably overwhelming burden towards him. All of my loneliness; all of my despair; all of my inner sickness; all of my disappointed hopes... everything.

I sat very still and listened to my own breath. I listened to the wind falling into the same rhythm as my heartbeat. I listened to other people passing me by. I listened and I waited.

I kept asking God for SOMETHING. I need a message... a single word. Anything.

And the entire time I felt the immense weight of my idolatry. Is it enough to WANT to be free?

Is it enough?

At the end of my few moments alone all I could ask for is for help. I am too weak. I may get a single breath of free air, but I will fall back into my behavior the moment I feel my own insignificance growing again.

And it is growing. It just keeps growing.

I guess that is what happens when you finally look that demon in the eye. It all becomes so clear. My entire life has been permeated by the lie... it MUST be a lie.

Because I know that God says that I am HIS. I am clean. I am free. I am forgiven. I am worth more than his own comfort. I am a price worth paying. I am sculpted by his own hand.

So, this voice that keeps telling me how distorted, forgotten, and hopeless I am HAS to be the voice of my enemy. My only enemy. That old snake.

I came home broken. So, so broken.

And then I talked to my girlfriend. We talked about where she is... it was startlingly familiar. How can two people be experiencing the same exact circumstances?

Our battle is the same. What introduced that sticky lie is different, but the result is the same. And I realized, while listening to her heart cry out like mine has been and hearing what God has spoken to her, that God was responding to my hungering for a message. He was answering me through her mirroring anguish. He spoke hope to her. She spoke hope to me.

So God hasn't forgotten.

And, somehow, freedom must be an option. It must be true.

What is required of me is a true death. A death for that looming idol of self. A death of my self destructive behavior and of the lie that has rooted itself into the very center of my life.

I must get off that throne.

God MUST sit there, firm and rooted.

God alone.

God alone...