season of love
I have never felt like I've heard God‘s voice speaking to me, personally. Not a "Jacob, Jacob!" moment, not once. And to be honest, I've not tried to listen all that much. But I hear Him speaking to me in other ways, through music and nature and my own introspection. And while I've still never heard a voice, tonight at a worship night, I walked in with questions and came out knowing exactly what God's answer would be. The questions foregone, the answer was a resounding, fall in love with Me.
As you may have noted with my last post, I've been thinking about love lately; a little busy lately; a little distracted lately; a little poetic and rambling lately. Over the years in high school and college, I've spent various different cycles questioning why I've been single my whole life. Answers, some true, some false, have come in waves. You're too crazy. You're not pretty enough. You're too busy. You're waiting. You're too intimidating. You don't want to be. You're being taught something. You're not good enough for him. You're too good for him. You can't be tied down. You're this, that, the other thing. It's a unique struggle that only people who have never been in a romantic situationship have had to ask themselves. I overcame most of the "you're not good enough" back in high school. It's been "I'm learning" or I'm waiting" in college. And I've been content. Sometimes I wonder or struggle, but I recognize that while I’ve been in college, I've pursued and accomplished at so many things with the time I had available to me. Nothing has ever been wasted.
Last year, I had an especially large amount of time when classes went online for covid. This and other events lead me to be in a place with Jesus that I'd never been in before. I felt as if I was truly in love with him. The giddy kind of love. If you've never experienced it, this may sound odd to you, but it defies every other kind of love. It's romantic without being distracting, it's consuming but never sexual. It's being held without being physically touched. I lived in this love for a few months, talking to God and feeling so at ease and so full of Him. I drew and painted and mused on His goodness. I didn't have a blog at the time, so I never ended up journaling like this about it, though I wish I had.
And then the pandemic seemed to relent, a little. We weren't locked in our rooms any more. Activities were rescheduled. I had less time. I wouldn't say I fell out of love, but I would say I lost sight of it. Like any love, it faltered without communication. Since then I've been in and out, learning and reading, but not consistently. But wanting to. Knowing it is a need...but then ignoring the steps I need to take.
The past few months have been different. With the close of the summer, I was excited to be back into the swing of a school year, into a time of growing and learning with God. I would talk about being excited to fall in love with God again. I was thinking about it a lot, but not following through. "I'm so ready to do yoga every morning and talk to God and pray over the room and sit in His presence and fall in love," I would tell myself, and then I wouldn't really do anything about it. I'd have a good conversation about it with someone, rediscovering the passion...and then let it be squashed by busyness or stress.
The last few weeks, I've felt Him calling even more. He reminds me every day of wanting to be love with Him and of our divine dance last year. I hear Him in the music we sing in choir and the laughs of my friends and I felt Him in the blue butterflies I drew on the window of my car today. I feel like He's right there. I only need to commit, and my heart is so full of love for everything that I would instantly overflow in His presence. I can feel it.
The last few weeks have been distracting. I feel myself being pulled away from Jesus, just to think. To once again, in cycle,
question my singleness. The cycles get longer and longer; the last time I really considered this was almost a year ago. Still, opportunities surround me like they always have:
apples weighing down the limbs of a tree daring me to make a move. So I find myself thinking about the tree. About the apples. And then I turn back to Jesus. I listen, a little. And then I think about the apples again. The tree. I shake my head and roll down the windows while I drive to feel the wind in my hair. It reminds me of how the holy spirit speaks to my heart. Then I walk in the fallen leaves, and think of the tree once again. For a little too long. And then I hear Him calling me back.
I arrive at this conclusion: to be in a relationship means a loss of focus on something I've never wanted more. I'm curious, so curious, about love, and I think this time I’ve misplaced the curiosity and think it's for earthly romantic love. But it's not. The circumstances that lead to the poems in my last post didn't cause me to fall in love with all the little things. God did. Homemade bread and soup, shadows, oil paint; it was always Him, in different ways and languages, speaking to my heart even while He was teaching me to open it wide.Through the years I feel like I’ve opened and opened and opened and have been falling in love with the art of the world ever since.
As soon as I stepped foot into the church tonight, I knew my answer. I knew what He wanted to say. I disregarded the opening prayer from the pastor and wrote my own:
I could fall in love with someone in two minutes
I don’t have to try to know
but I can't when Your love
comes in waterfalls
that I haven’t learned to stand underneath yet
I can’t when Your love
stands before me like a shimmering light
calling me higher and higher
closer and closer to your heart
and I haven’t held it to my chest, this love
haven’t let You pull me in past arms length
not yet
I could fall in love with someone in one smile
and lose all intention of listening to You
I'd speed past Your blind spotted whispers,
my stomach alive with butterflies
but I can’t when all I’ve ever really wanted
even when I didn’t know it
was to be with You
sit with You
live with You
love with You
even when I didn’t know it
I could fall in love with someone in one glance
and leave behind Your name for the pinwheels spinning in my mind
cheap pinwheels I would buy without hesitation
following their trails through the wind,
through the woods
wandering without thinking
but I don’t need the bass to reverberate through my body
to realize that you are everything I ever needed
even when I didn’t know it
g.c.s
I see my friends in relationships, engaged. I see their love and I think about it, if it was me. I do not envy them, but I am curious. If it were me, I would be ecstatic, inspired, over the moon. But I would be distracted. I realize that once I commit to a relationship of any kind, I won't have the desire to bring me, just me, wholly to God--at least not in the same way I do now. In the way children cry for their mothers--with one heart and set of needs to bring, to be satisfied. To be lifted up and held. I have felt it before and I am longing to feel it again. To be sustained, wholly, by Him. To attribute every little romance to Him alone, without faltering. To have the beauty of fall entrance me into wanting to hold His hand and walk with Him--not anyone else. To listen to the love songs He sings to me rather than wondering if someone would ever write me one. To hear Him, everywhere. See, feel, know--it is Him. It's always Him, the love I find everywhere. It's never been anyone else.
It's coming, I can feel it in the fall air. The season of love. A season of love. It's not something that happens once or twice in a lifetime, but everyday, with someone who knows me better than anyone else. I want to live in His love, day and night. Morning and afternoon and evening. Stressful shifts and awkward conversations. Every single moment, Him going before me. Easing out the tangles and speaking softly to my heart and soul.
I've wondered why I've never been in a relationship for the last time. I know why. I know where, and how, and when. It's always been Him, His love. My singleness has lead me to see who He wants me to be, lead me to love little details and big pictures alike with astounding joy. He's shaped me with anxiety and broken family hurt and sustained me with His words and His voice. He's brought me, just me, to where I need to be. Keeping me on my own, tucked inside His palm, He's showed me exactly who I am, in my own unique way. Letting me pursue my own passions and question why I was alone. Letting me grow through high school and college to show me the reasons why I would soon love to be on my own. Questioning me, pushing me through opportunities and feelings, but letting those doors shut softly before my still feet.
I feel as if another door hangs open in front of me now, as if God is letting me choose what to do with it, but I already know. Only now do I notice that so many windows have lifted open that it feels as if the house where I stand has aged back in time to when it was built. The roof is just an expanse of sky, the wooden frame suddenly echoing around me. The only solid wood is the door right in front of me, ajar, and I've been staring at it for a few weeks too long. Tonight a breeze, His breeze sweeps my chin up to the sky, to notice the way the constellations have been waiting. Where He has been waiting my whole life, watching me stare at those clunky, wooden, human doors. Lifting window after window after window. I see myself, in the middle of a forest, inside the frame of an unfinished house. I'm stepping forward. I'm toeing the door closed. I'm lifting my face, my arms to the sky.
If I believed in luck, I would say that I think I may be one of the luckiest people alive. But I believe in God, so I know that I have been held and prepared for the rest of my life with every single passing day. And I'm tired of only thinking about it, sometimes singing about it, sometimes praying, barely reading. Every single passing day holds so much value, and I can't stand to let them slide by. With every single passing day, I want to fall in love over and over again. Here I am, Lord. All by myself. Ready to let you rule. Ready, so ready, to speak in windows instead of doors.
Fall is the season of love, and this time, I promise to write about it.
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