Light (Let There Be)

I've been trying to fit words into the empty spaces between what I show on the outside and what resides in the depths of my soul. The things there are hard to dredge up these days, for I have already tasted the cost of vulnerability and I shrink from it still. And so I hover somewhere over my heart, somewhere between the physical world around me and the desperate rawness of emotional reality. I forgot, somewhere along the line, what it was like to feel, to really feel. Things like passionate love, deep sorrow, hopeful excitement, visionary faith that longs for flight and more than that--believes in it. I left those emotions behind, kept in a box somewhere in the attic of my soul, gathering dust.

When things hurt enough, you let them go. It is the natural human reaction, when burned, to release. And yet, here I stand before the refining fire of the Lord, willing myself to go in, to be burned and purified, yet afraid of the flame. Go in, says my spirit. Run, run far away, says my flesh. Once bitten, twice shy. I shall not fall in love again today.

I finger the blinds in the church. It is quiet--I am alone, but I am not alone. Golden sunlight cascades in, gently dipping behind the mountain. When it is silent, I feel as though the air around me becomes like a thousand tiny bells, ringing soft, magical tones. My head, for once, is silent, and so I listen to everything and nothing and I watch the sun slowly set. There is beauty. I am starting, once more, to see it, to grasp it in my heart and let it warm and fertilize the soil of my soul. Wonder is beginning to sprout up in me, and I delight in it--but cautiously. I hope that one day all of this hurt will only serve to bolster the beauty that I behold, but for now I still struggle with cynicism and with the walls that I would build to keep my heart safe and sound. But here in the church, there is only sunlight and the sound of bells and if I suck in, air enters my lungs--I am alive and it is well with my soul.

The Spirit of God hovered over the black void. Let there be light. And there was. Light so bright that it scattered shadows in an instant, bursting apart the prison of nothingness. But as He hovers over my fragile soul, He is gentle, coaxing out the light like a sunrise, soft and slow, yet glorious. My whisper grows stronger with each day, I will not die, but live and proclaim the works of the Lord. 

I stop at the light and distractedly flip through radio stations. My heart is quiet within me and I am relishing the simplicity. I retrace my steps on the radio as I register a song that I know and deftly turn the volume up. And as You speak... a hawk swoops down in front of me, wings outspread in breathtaking flight. A hundred billion creatures catch Your breath... it does not disappear, but continues to dip nearer and nearer to earth, as though it was there simply for me to behold its beauty. Evolving in pursuit of what You said...I lose myself in its flight and I encounter God without the confines of words. Just beauty, Just wonder. Just awe at His nature, revealed in a red-tailed hawk functioning as it was designed to by the Creator. If it all reveals Your nature so will I... the light turns and I reluctantly release the moment.

But my heart will not let go. I find that, buried under layers of callous, it is still beating, it is still tender, it is almost, almost ready to learn what it means to love again.