Patient Excavation

There is a song that reads:

Open up the skies of mercy,
And rain down the cleansing flood.
Healing waters…
Rise around us.
Let them rise, LORD
Let them rise.

It’s your beauty, LORD,
That makes us stand in silence.
And your love,
Your love,
Is better than life.

I love the moments when everything else in life, accomplishment and struggle, melt away leaving only these words in my heart. It feels like a waterfall that has been hidden for centuries bursts forth and as the water cascades down my heart fills with warmth. I always get chills when I feel this way.
Lately there has been an overwhelming peace in my life. Peace, like all of GOD’s blessings, has been present always; I am just more aware of it these days. What I love about GOD’s peace is that there is appreciation for stillness and excitement for motion at the same time.
Through this peaceful time I have also been reading and GOD has revealed an area of my heart that needs to be dusted off, opened, examined, submitted, healed, and overcome. Pieces of The Shack and Waking the Dead have brought an awareness of intimacy that I have hidden from for years. An aspect of love, which I was created for, that got buried under pain, anger, resentment, and fear.
I can vividly remember other times in my life where GOD loved my hurt away: overcoming self-injury (SI) and un-forgiveness of myself. I can recall the feelings, triumphs, slip-ups, and mental notes that led from despair to victory and the undoubted knowledge that GOD alone had made that success possible. And even though it was one of the sweetest moments in my life, it was also one of the hardest.
That may be why I have hidden intimacy and transparency behind deep curtains. But GOD has just coaxed this area of my life to the surface, and I feel my hands open up and push through the curtain slowly. It is very scary when the deepest of deep fears come into the light; I am always unsure of others and myself.
I read BEAUTIFUL pictures of GOD’s love in The Shack, and I tried to imagine a day in that relationship. How restful and compassionate that must feel. I am being exposed, by Waking the Dead, to the centrality of the heart. How living from the mind alone shifts my attention and my values to efficiency and performance. And since I was designed to live from the heart I am deeply hindered by living from the mind. As I read I become more and more aware of this lack of intimacy in me, and I can see the ways in which our current world has gone so terribly wrong.

“Notice, there was a man who was once real and alive and in love (speaking of the tin woodman in the Wizard of Oz). But after a series of blows, his humanity was reduced to efficiency. He became a sort of machine-a hollow man. At first, he did not even notice, for his condition made him an excellent woodman, as any person can become productive like a machine when he forgoes his heart. Notice also that it was the Wicked Witch who brought the disaster upon him. Baum’s mythic tale reminds us that the Enemy knows how vital the heart is, even if we do not, and all his forces are fixed upon its destruction. For if he can disable or deaden your heart, then he has effectively foiled the plan of GOD, which was to create a world where love reigns. By taking out your heart, the Enemy takes out you, and you are essential to the Story. You’ll notice he’s been rather effective” (Page 38).

I have expended too much time and energy creating anxiety within myself because I compare myself to someone else who appears perfect. People who seem to “have it all together,” and I put together these obnoxious lists of things to do which I am fully aware will exhaust me. Instead of learning how to live as I was designed and how to interact with a perfect love, I have measured myself against machine like efficiency and impossible standards.
I have come to understand and appreciate making my heart a priority, but GOD is leading me into deeper study of what it means to live with my heart at the center. “Emotions are the voice of the heart, to borrow Chip Dodd’s phrase. Not the heart, but its voice. They express the deeper movements of the heart, as when we week over the loss of someone we love, or when we cheer at the triumph of a son’s team at the state championship. The mind stands detached, but it is with the heart that we experience and respond to life in all its fullness. Francis de Sales said, ‘Love is the life of our heart. According to it we desire, rejoice, hope and despair, fear, take heart, hate avoid things, feel sad, grow angry, and exult’” (Pg 43).
I have found that when GOD teaches a lesson which appears to be directed at one area of my life it ends up overflowing into all areas of my life and fulfilling me even more. I am expecting no less from this new adventure: excavating my heart.