From My Prayers

From my prayers this morning:

I am afraid of loving. Loving has brought such pain to me. Never once has love been easy. Never once have I fallen into love. I have dug my way into love until it covered me like dirt with every relationship I have ever had.

Loving you is not easy. You are perfect and removed. You want things from me that I cannot yet give. You demand declarations and time, gifts and acts of service. I feel overwhelmed. I don't know how to love you. I don't know how to make discipline into devotion. I don't know how.

God's Response:

I did not make you broken. I did not make you irredeemable. I did not make you unlovely or unloveable. And your faults have grown beauty within them. Your pain in love has borne fruit. Like a tree that grows in the dirt, your very presence becons life to it. You are not forgotten. You are not a lost cause.

And I am not a stern taskmaster. I do not want your perfection. I want your heart, broken though it may be. I do not want devotion as much as I want longing. Stop trying to deserve me, and start admiring me. Your heart already knows I am magnificent. Breathe it in and rest in my magnificence. Your mind already knows I am perfection. Lean back and rest in my perfect ability, my perfect love.

"May love be stronger in me than the pain that comes with caring. "

-Justin McRoberts