If Love is Weather Permitting, I Don't Have A Hope

So I am proud only of those days that we pass in undivided tenderness

-Robert Bly

My friend sent me this picture the other day

  I can't tell you why exactly,  I immediately enlarged it, printed it out, and now it sits on the desk in my office

I find myself staring at it for awkwardly long periods of time

This picture settles quietly and makes a home in my Heart 

I feel like this image has been me

In my imagination, for so long

Needing to be hugged

In what may actually be, way too many times a day

Needing the assurance that someone is bigger than me

Loves me

Now, somehow my day dreams take life and form in some tangible piece of Pintrest art

This is me

Feeling small

Needing a reminder that someone sees my Heart

and sees something good in me

When I find myself in far away places

Far away from the real Christina

Far away from God

Believing that someones sees something more in me

And the larger perspective than my tiny "drowning in the largeness of life" perception

Unconditional Love

Perfect Love

Casting out every single Fear

I can't tell you how many mornings, and nights

And countless afternoons

I have spent, crawling up into God's lap

Like a little girl

Wondering if I am actually allowed to do this......

Let alone so often...?

But I just need to rest somewhere safe

Somewhere away from me

With someone who sees me

And understands my Heart

When it looks like a tangled ball of 10 different colors of yarn

I'm just so tired of trying to fix the jumbled mess

I want to throw it across the room and cry in frustration

With myself

I can't tell you how I have ached to be embraced so purely

Welcomed like this

After I've messed up

Inexcusably

Chosen garbage purposefully

Longing for someone to still Believe in me

As I stand there, every bad motive and weakness exposed

Met with Affection

Tenderness

Every Time

Ya, that is Perfect Love

That is what I'm Believing in

Because if it doesn't exist

I don't really have a hope

If Love is weather permitting

How could I build a  Home in such an uncertain environment

I camp on Truth from Psalm 103 often

God makes everything come out right
    He puts victims back on their feet
God is sheer mercy and grace
    Not easily angered 

He’s rich in Love
He doesn’t endlessly nag and scold
    Nor hold grudges forever
He doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve
    Nor pay us back in full for our wrongs
As high as heaven is over the earth
    So strong is his Love to those who fear him
And as far as sunrise is from sunset
    He has separated us from our sins
As parents feel for their children
    God feels for those who fear him
He knows us inside and out
    Keeps in mind that we’re made of mud

Brennon Manning puts it this way in his book "The Furious Longings of God"

"The Jesus I met in the grounds of my own self, has furiously Loved me regardless of my state- Grace or disgrace.  And why?  For His Love is never never never based on our performance, never conditioned by our moods- of elation or depression.  The furious Love of God knows no shadow of alteration or change.  It is reliable. And always tender"

I need to go to bed.  I should have been sleeping instead of being up and about in the wee hours of the morning

I'm going to go back under my covers for, hopefully, 2 hours 

I'm gonna snuggle up to Trevor and put my cold bare feet on his legs

And rest in the fact that in spite of the mamoth list of shoulds and shouldn't, pass and fails, what-if's, if only's, and I cant's, that I have constructed for myself

God Loves me

And right now, I am welcome in His arms

XOXOXO