I was rereading M. Scott Peck's A Bed By the Window, which by the way is an awesome book, and I read this part:
"Mrs. Simonton glanced at the office door through her tears to make sure it was shut. Not caring otherwise, knowing the staff might hear something strange, she looked over at the couch as if God Himself were sitting there smirking, and she hit her fist on the desk. "I don't trust You," she half screamed. "I've never trusted You. You've never deserved it, and I don't intend to begin trusting You now!"'
And on my goodness, I remembered so clearly reading that book and having that character's courageous and unsettling authenticity with God just really resonate with me. I loved reading it, the first time. It knocked something loose in me.
Last night, when I reread it, I had to put the book down and rest my head against the back of the couch, just thinking about it. I felt Him very close to me, as I was thinking about it.
"You loved me even then!" I said to Him, in wonder.
"Of course," He replied. "I love you as you are."
"But I was full of anger and mistrust."
"I want you as you really are, not as you wish to be," He said.
This is a really hard concept for me to grasp, but as I tested it fully, it must be true. Because He really did love me, all those years I kept Him at arm's length, out of mistrust and shame and fear. It didn't phase Him; He was relentless in His love.
I'm learning more and more not to hide things from Him. It's pointless anyway; He knows it all. To let it go, to acknowledge its reality, is such a freeing and therapeutic thing to do, I've found.
So, then I went back to reading my book and I got to this part:
"Well, I do believe in God."
"So?"
"So I talk to God and He talks to me. I talked to Him a great deal last night. I asked Him what could be done to help Heather. His answer to me was very clear."
I had to pause at that part too. I thought about the strangeness of talking to God and having Him reply. It's unconventional and comes out sounding grandiose no matter how I try and write it, although its perfectly obvious that He doesn't talk to me about anything really important- at least, anything that would be important to anyone else. He's not talking to me about the world or His plans or anything like that- He just talks to me about me.
Then I thought about it this way. For the most part, we relate to God through faith, while in this life. Now God can come down and shatter our phantom reality with His overwhelming reality, but He doesn't usually choose to. It seems to me that He lets us choose the size of the opening by which we experience Him- the window of our faith.
If we open the window wide, we present Him with a wide opportunity to interact with us. If we keep it narrow, for whatever reason, usually He respects our boundaries, unless for some reason of His own, He comes in full of grace and truth and expands us on His own. Which it seems to me He does sometimes, thank God! Otherwise, sometimes we'd be stuck.
Other times, maybe He gives us a deep longing and the longing is so great that we open all the windows, because we can't standing living in the smallness anymore. In that case, we find that we must have more of Him, and we will risk transparency to do so.
That's what it's been like for me. My thirst for God is so great that I must throw open all the windows and all the doors. Also, the deeper I go with Him, the more rooms inside myself I throw open for Him, because I know He's been inside them anyway. So I might as well be bold, you know?
I can't take the credit for this longing, because He placed it in me. He made me this way; I just yield to it. But I love it and I love Him and I love Him for making me this way.
There's a lot of risks inherent in talking to God, it seems to me, when I think about it. (One is that other people may think you are bag lady crazy.) But when I can surrender into Him and into the risk, and talk anyway, I have opened the window to actually hearing Him.
It's just simple trust, that is all. It's not some form of Super Spirituality or ultra perfection or anything else silly like that. All it is, is being quiet in Him with a kind of childlike trust.
I can't help but notice that the closer I draw to Him, the younger I feel myself to be. Part of myself doesn't like this- I want the dignity of being an adult. Another part of me finds this completely delightful and right, and a profound relief.
Of course I want to be perfect for Him. A part of me wishes to present my perfection to Him like a lovely gift that He's so grateful for. But that's not how it works- not for me, anyway. For me, it's the other way round. When I try and reverse it, and work on my own perfection for Him, all I do is turn my back on Him so I can get myself in good working order, as it were.
When I'm wrestling with this- with self judgment or some imperfection or fear or something else that hurts and bothers me, it's as though I were a child holding something sharp or jagged and stubbornly trying to make it better. And Christ touches my shoulder, to remind me and with relief, I turn to Him and I give it up to Him. He throws it as far away from us as the east is from the west and remembers it no more.
Then He picks me up in His arms and carries me and I am safe and home again. And I am so very grateful for it.
