... how long do you want to be loved...

... is forever enough, is forever enough ... "
(d. chicks)

i feel so full. so much in fact that i'm not sure what to do with everything i'm filling up with. this morning i was doing my thing at the gym and this dixie chicks song came on my little iPod. it's a gentle song, not very fast at all... but the way my heart thumped at the lyrics was enough to power me through another set of bicep curls [laugh. go ahead. because it is a funny thing to imagine.] for a few months i've been presenting God with a request for inspiration, for something to sprout out of this uninspired heart, for life. i've felt a little withered for some time, and now it's like blood is starting to pump and flow again. i might even hear a faint heart beat.

it's almost enough for tears.

my eyes are opening. i'm seeing people more fully, i'm seeing myself more clearly, i'm seeing God less fearfully, more peacefully... and longingly. words are coming to me in a new way ... so fast i can barely keep up (sometimes when i'm without paper and a pen, i kind of just ask God to remind me later). i want to listen more, speak less. i've said it before and i'll say it again: i want to be less defensive... resist the temptation to interpret things as threats that aren't really threats. i might just be settling deeper in to myself.

interesting how this fullness, this peace, is happening in tandem with this compulsion to manage and do and fix and resolve. this morning i woke up two hours earlier than i had planned. it was as if my mind never really turned off from last night. "God... what am i supposed to do?" i decided i was going to try to listen to what God might have to say to me rather than jump into problem-solving list-making mode. i could be wrong, but i think i sensed Him telling me to just be. to be present, to be honest, to be congruent, to be whole, to have open hands, to be unapologetic for what He's made me to be. to be without disclaimers, without shame, without hiding, without over analyzing, without preemptively striking myself with a judgmental critique, without bolting and deserting, without grasping or grappling. don't do anything. be, baby, be.

notice... i haven't sensed God tell me to go look for resolution to every tension, to definitively answer every question, to come to conclusions, to make this place in life a decision point. He's inviting me to the freedom and wholeness of being. do i love Him? yes. do i choose Him? yes. then it's His grace and power and sovereignty that fuel me... not fear. He's pushing me out into the world with a simple word: "go."

for the first time in a long time [or ever], i am catching glimpses of the way God has used mistakes, pain, and lack of resolution to carve out a place for Him to whisper to me.

maybe the life that's swelling my heart is love. it's wonderfully terrifying to imagine loving in a way that makes me vulnerable to things like rejection. but the other alternatives are: a) swallow the love, keep it for self, turn into an ingrown person, to rot, or b) deny it is even there, flush out that love blood, not let it even nurture my own soul as it passes through, to calcify, to be brittle.

so....

"how long do you want to be loved?
is forever enough, is forever enough?
how long do you want to be loved?
is forever enough, cause i'm never never giving you up. "