I came home from work today feeling very apathetic. I’m not sure what exactly started it, but it’s a feeling I’ve had all day and haven’t been able to shake. Haven’t really tried.

When I get in moods like this, I generally feed and water them with poor self-talk and a purposeful blackness that colours everything, including my view of the past, present and ever-threatening future. Today was no exception.

As I drove up the exit ramp of Interstate 270 towards my home, I thought, “Really, is any of this worth it? What is the point? Why do I bother with all this responsibility, pain and nothingness? It doesn’t matter anyway. I never get what I truly want.”

I walked in the door and immediately came into the den and turned on the computer. I’d planned to start this entry early, during my blackest of black times of the day. Get it over and done with and out of my hair.

To add insult to infuriating injury, Max came by then to drop of the synthesizers I’m selling for him. His very presence filled my house and made me smile in spite of myself. Although my dog wouldn’t go near him, even when he called. Bayliss hid behind me, peering out at him. “Don’t you wanna come see me?” Max asked him. “He doesn’t remember you,” I said pointedly at Max He ignored me.

Although I desperately wanted to talk to him, to sort some of this stuff out in my head, just spend some time with him for the first time in a week, Max left. He is busy recording his album and his mind is on his own affairs. I was left with a quiet, empty house, full of memories and achiness. Typical.

After my mom brought Justin home from the tree-removal festivities at their house, we went through our evening routine and I put him to bed. Then, out of sheer boredom, I took a bath. Dutifully I dragged Dan Allender’s The Healing Path in with me. I continued my trek through it, highlighting whatever caught my attention.

Something was clicking with me, this time. Here’s what I highlighted, in chunks of text, in a chapter called, “The Dance of Love.”

Healing the heart is never a mechanical process, nor is it a mystical breakthrough that only a few ever achieve. It involves a gut-wrenching choice that feels terrifying and foolish - but inevitable when one’s heart is gripped by God’s grace.

The future memories that sting the most are those that remind us of love that led to shame. Shame is the exposure of our foolishness to have trusted that another person would be true and good toward us. If we give that person our heart and then are betrayed, we have nothing and are nothing.

The memories create a dilemma as to which story, which face, we will allow to define us. We can’t answer the call to love unless we adore the faces of others. We can’t love without potentially losing face ourselves. We can’t love unless we remember the faces in our lives that have been our bridge to God. But in remembering we also recall faces that have scorned, used, and betrayed us. We don’t want to remember. But if we refuse to remember then we can’t recall the surprising events that narrate God’s wonderful, dramatic, maddening process of redeeming our lives. Love that is remembered draws us to a love that has not yet come - a dream woven with desire that draws us forward into the unseen realms of the healing journey.

Faith is our ballast, the ground of confidence that enables us to withstand sorrow and loss. Hope is the wind that drives us forward to risk for redemption. Faith and hope take us to the greatest comfort and most radical danger of our lives: love. Love calls us to open our ambivalent hearts, wait in desire, embrace others for a time, and then free them to follow the calling of God in their own lives.

The healing path always leads us back into the human fray to be betrayed and to savor both human and divine love.

But whenever we make our hearts available to God, he works his way in and draws us tenderly to his open arms… He meets our desire with his presence - disruptive and strange as it is - and then dances with us only as wildly as we wish. Many times, we simply don’t want to dance with him, even if we say we do.

Love begins when we ask, seek and knock… But shame warns: “Don’t be a fool. Don’t get involved. Don’t risk, you will only be sorry.” … But shame is ultimately a lie. It says we are nothing, no one; being awake and involved will never pay off.

Love is sustained by hope. Love is exhausting. We don’t often see the rewards in this life.

Hope enables us to give and receive while waiting for the fruits of love to grow.

Love is not pushy, nor does it require an immediate response. Love filled with hope involves the relinquishment of the desire to push impatiently ahead; for it depends on a sequence of events that proceeds independently of our actions. Love waits.

Waiting is a bold surrender to desire … Waiting requires the discipline to set aside short-term pleasure or quick satisfaction for a greater fulfillment. Waiting is sustained by the anticipation of fullness; therefore, it is sustained by dreaming. … A believing heart dreams through prayer. Waiting does not mean sitting. It means kneeling, submitting, and humbling myself not only to the expanse of dreams desired, but to the acknowledgment that I can’t make the dream appear. … When it matters most, I am most helpless. Yet when it matters most, I am most susceptible to looking for a way around my powerlessness.

…when the desire has to do with desires of the heart - love, forgiveness, reconciliation, healing - then we are on a level playing field where boldness is merely the courage to desire without relenting. Bold prayer bombards heaven relentlesslly with the cries of our soul.

Hope in love feels so foolish and reckless. When we consider the wager of love, shame nearly always mocks, “You are a fool. You’ve risked everything for nothing. Protect yourself. Wouldn’t your time be better spent mapping out a plan and working toward the unreachable goal? Or even better, wouldn’t it be easier to numb the desire and distract yourself with something that doesn’t leave you feeling more hungry and farther from the dream?” No. Hope has penetrated my soul and seized me. My arms are open and outstretched, moving toward the dreams I welcome from afar. Love is the most profound risk of life. We open our hearts and then refuse to harden our hearts or trivialize our desire for full, glorious redemption.

All love on this earth must be held with open hands. … Love pours itself out, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Love lets go of its inalienable rights; it leaves others free to respond or reject it. Love does not grasp and hold onto others, compelling them to live for us.

The more redemption matters, the less hold the powers of the earth have over us. The less fear and shame can constrain us and shape how we speak, live and die, the more gratitude and awe mold us to become more like Jesus Christ.

Joy is not an absence of struggle or sorrow, but the taste of the presence of God as he surprises us with his gracious love, whatever our circumstances.

Faith, hope and love invite us to become the people we are meant to be. But being moves. Being does. … It is unbecoming to do only what is required; instead, we must live out the deepest purposes of our lives.

That was a lot for me to handle in one bath, let me tell you. It’s like the words were so foreign to me - as if I were seeing them all for the first time. Perhaps I was. Perhaps this day they mean something. I don’t know. I’ve said it all before and I’m sure I’ll have to say it all again. But, something will change. I know. Why? Because I asked God for it.

The most impacting statement in the book is what Dr. Allender said to his young son one spring evening as they sat on the porch, and his son asked, “Am I here for some reason?” His answer?

“You are the only you this world will know, and something about your life is meant to make something about God known in a way no one else can.”

That made me cry. Finally, a reason I understand.

Planting seeds,

mich