I have just come out of roughly 48 hours of hibernation during which I reviewed my journals from April of last year up to the present.  This stretch covers the time leading up to and including a year of learning to love beyond ways I had known before by God’s invitation.  The following is today’s journal entry summarizing that journey:

“As I quietly sit and reflect, I realize I have come to know the love of God more deeply, intimately, persistently, graciously and personally than I have ever known.  It has been experienced in the darkest moments of inner turmoil, absolute failure, ongoing confusion, futile effort and deep loss.  It has been experienced in my hardest of heart moments, in the shattering, in the picking up of the pieces; in the softest moments of confession, praise and devotion.  It has been love at its best.

Where do I go from here?  While I don’t have a specific sense of the picture, I know that I am called to protect that love for me by upholding my dignity, being watchful, being present…Defending the worth of my soul by controlling my own drawbridge, listening only to specifics not generalities, tilting my energies and focus toward my strengths, calling things as they are, and seeking out those who will engage with me in the process, with honesty and with care.

I am also called to offer that love…to not keep it to myself.  There are at least two aspects to this.  The first covers things like:  not offering human sacrifices (see below); being straight up, no “back-dooring”; and remembering rightly.  The second covers things like:  moving toward others to offer a taste of life; including those who harm me; staying open and vulnerable; offering reckless grace, generosity, audacious welcome, forgiveness, asham and shalom; and always listening – to God and to others.

In all of this to:  choose life, only that and always, and at whatever risk; give up seeking solid ground; stay away from gluten, pop and chocolate; give myself permission to fail and land in the embrace of God; know that I am at war and that my greatest place of vulnerability is in my mind; and finally, to continue moving deeper into the love of God, knowing that I will never reach its end.”

re:  human sacrifice – in reference to Hosea 13:2 in which God lodges one of many complaints against his people.  As I reflected on this, I wrote in my journal:  maybe we don’t take a literal knife to people’s throats, but we slay people all the time with our words, our dismissal of them, or our isolation of them.