Confessional

There are some amazing writers out there who have this incredible ability to take their heart into their hands and bleed all over the page and somehow make it beautiful. We're seeing this more and more, particularly in religious/Christian writing. Particularly in religious/Christian blogs. There's this resurgence of raw, confessional language that is drawing us into our own hearts by allowing us into the hearts of others.

This...is not one of those blogs. I...am not one of those writers.

Although, truth be told, I want to be.

I want to be one of those writers who is so beautifully human that you can't help but be more in touch with your own spirit when you leave this page. I want to be one of those writers who loves God undeniably, out loud, in a way that makes Him more real, more powerful, more unimaginable and yet, more immanent with every word. I want to be one of those writers whose wrestling is so raw that it can't possibly be anything but real. I want to be one of those writers that awakens your heart and draws you into the very midst of all that God wants you to be, not because I'm anything special, but because at least, maybe, I'm something real.

I want to be one of those writers because I think we need as much of that as we can get in this world. Particularly in this world.

But the truth is that I can't be one of those writers. Because I don't know what to do with my own heart.

There are days, most days, that I think the weight of my own heart is going to kill me. It's too much of a burden to bear. How am I supposed to live in this world? How am I supposed to love in it? I wonder how I'm ever going to pour one more sacred drop of anything even remotely good, even potentially holy out of this heart that is, so often, running dry. I look around at the brokenness that I see all around me, the very things God has called me to respond to, the things that stir my heart...and the stirring becomes so often just this emptiness that I feel. Like a stomach prone to hunger, it gnaws and aches inside of me, and I wonder what on earth I'm supposed to do with that.

How am I supposed to ache?

Yet at the very moment that the ache becomes so real that I can almost hold onto it long enough to pray in my tight-folded hands, it is gone. Replaced by the confident assurance of abundance and strength. Sated by a fullness that I cannot describe. I wonder how I'm supposed to do it...but I can't imagine doing anything else. I wonder how I'm supposed to live in this world, with this heart, but I can't imagine doing it any other way. I wonder how I'm supposed to love, but I can't imagine not loving. I wonder what I'm supposed to do with this emptiness, but it's become so full.

One. More. Drop.

One more drop of something holy is always rolling around inside of me. One more drop of something sacred to pour out into this world. At just the moment I feel most my emptiness, I know there is this one more drop, and it feels like everything. It's more than I could ever imagine. And still I wonder...if I give this one more drop, will I have anything left?

So close to empty, what does empty feel like? At the moment I think that I know, I realize that I know nothing at all. For I have the greatest of fullness, and it feels like everything.

And nothing.

And something.

So the question I wrestle with every time I come to this page is the question I wrestle with, really, when I am away from it: what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be holy?

How do I avoid just adding to the words, adding to the noise of this world and truly do something meaningful with what little space I have in it? How do I draw you deeper into your own heart, knowing how tangled I get in my own? How do I offer something full in the emptiness, in my emptiness?

How do I speak in God's voice, wrapped in my own, so that you hear His whisper in the depths of your own soul, His story wrapped in yours? How do I use my voice to help you find yours?

How do I use me, my story, my heart, my one small drop of sacred, to make this not about me? How do I use everything I've got to make this all about Him?

How do I make use of my gnawing, aching, broken, empty, sated, abundant heart when the God's-honest truth is that more often than not, even I don't know what to do with it?