giant-slayers.

August 4, 2010

it was hard, but i am strong.

"THEREFORE I DO NOT RUN LIKE A MAN RUNNING AIMLESSLY; I DO NOT FIGHT LIKE A MAN BEATING THE AIR. NO I BEAT MY BODY AND MAKE IT MY SLAVE SO THAT AFTER I HAVE PREACHED TO OTHERS, I MYSELF WILL NOT BE DISQUALIFIED FOR THE PRIZE."
-1 CORINTHIANS 9: 25-27

Once upon a time, in the middle of a chapel in Nowhere, Tennessee, a man told us to close our eyes and think about our favorite food, and our most loved people, and our deepest and most secret desires. He told us that this is our heart, and that is who we truly are, and to always stay in that place if we can. I think this was the beginning.

Similarly, about nine months later, I was sitting in a pizza parlor in the middle of Nowhere, Tennessee with a very good friend of mine who shall remain nameless. All of our friends were at the bar, dancing and getting drunk on tired things, but we were alone, and I was quiet and he was talking to me. "I know what's wrong with you," he said. "You want to be happy but you're going about it in the wrong way. You have no self confidence and this is sad because you have every reason to be confident. You need to spend quiet time alone. Just you, and God." This may also be looked at, as the beginning.

For my whole life, I have been walking around with a quiet grief inside, as if I have just buried a dear friend, or witnessed a horrible crime. It is because I wanted to receive pure love, but was unable to give it that my heart had hardened so much. And, so I set out on a mission to not only know Christ, but to become one with him. I wanted to put a leash on Love, and call it my own. I wanted to defend Love by name, identify it in a Crowd, smile assuredly when good impostors tried to take its place. I did not seek love ferociously, as I intended to receive the way I sought. I decided that I would not attack Life, nor defend myself from its lashings, but instead find the most vulnerable pieces of soul I had left and offer those up to the Heavenly God.
I did not want to be strong in the way the world is strong, I wanted to admit just how weak I was before the jury, and allow God to give me his personal defense.
I knew that I did not want a mortal love etched onto my face, tattooed onto my soul, as I understood that they would not last. I wasn't running away at all, I believed that everything was round, I was just trying to find a better way to come back.

I was so sure I could not miss a thing.

This love that I have looked for, this love that I have found, is unfamiliar, but very sure. It is not what I feel when kissing a boyfriend, although that experience has a shred of dignity because of this pure thing. I think that it is because I can't hold on to it, that I can't deny it. It's there, even in my waking hours, even when I am in school, or teaching, or eating, it never moves or changes, because it is not meant to be possessed. I believe that is meant to exist only when we are in our best forms, only in our dreams. The way you trust that the sun will not fall out of the sky, or that the mountains will not dissolve into dust, this is how love is. This is how God created love.

And in my dreams, in my meditations on the crucifixion, in my quiet mind, in my serious prayers, all else seethes away. Twenty years from now, I will still be waking from sweet sleep, marveling at the absence of these nightmares, thinking that if were not for Love, I would still be having them.

And all is infinite in You--
Forever Yours,
J.A.H.M.