Purpose or Prison

Sometimes I don’t know what to write. There’s too much – noisy and jumbled. It’s hard to focus on what’s important anymore. I saw my life crumble piece by piece and I fought with everything in me to hold onto even the breadcrumbs that remained.

“It’s your soul awakening,” they say. “It’s your twin flame journey – your purpose on the planet is to unite with this person and bring love to the planet.” How is this love? How is losing everything to become a slave to an expectation I can never overcome a form of love? This feels like the old love. The one spoken of for thousands of years where performance was the way to salvation. To be good and do good and put on your best behavior in order to be acceptable to love’s list of occupants. And even then it seems unfitting to be a number out of a million thriving for the same God’s affection.

I don’t feel love and accepted. I feel tried, tested, judged and sent back to the drawing board time and time again. I’m too much, too little, too intense, too weak, too beautiful, not beautiful enough and in the cuffs of the waves that come to overtake me my moments of rest unleash a tsunami of debilitating thoughts. I wonder can I ever win this war. Can I ever earn this man’s love and affection. Can I ever be good enough to be loved as I am or is the entire purpose to lose myself and become something I’m not in order to earn my keep.

When I’m away from him I feel like he haunts me. When I’m close to him I feel like he’s inspecting me for all that’s wrong. When I’m in the coming together again moments my anxiety is at its peak as I brace myself for the next heartbreak. How can this be love?

In the Old Testament people did all kinds of silly things to conform to a religion that would make them blameless and acceptable to a Holy God. I would imagine they were exhausted from birth through death, leaving the heavy lifting they left unfinished to their children and grandchildren to bare. I don’t want that for my kids. I don’t want that even for my worst enemies. I’m tired. This can’t be the only reason we exist. There must be something better.

I imagine meeting the man who says to me, “I see you. I see all of you – everything you’ve ever been, everything you’ve ever done and all the wrong will you commit still. And I love you fully and completely in every moment of it all.” Is this not the promise of Christ? Never did he blame a woman for her shortcomings. Even the woman caught in adultery he washed clean, scared off her accusers and said, “I don’t condemn you.” I want to be her. I want to have no more accusers or fault finders around me to point out what they don’t like when they look at me. I want to be free to be me in my best moments and worst moments too and never lose a moment of sleep in the comfort of love’s unwavering and unfailing embrace.

I know Jesus loves me. He woke me from the dead, showed me a screen with hope and a future and then he brought me back to life – healed and blameless with a new chapter ahead. I want this again. I want the love of God to be the guide that truly uplifts and delivers me to the place where that love isn’t just remembered like a distant dream but felt and experienced always – every morning when I wake up through the day and into my peaceful hours of rest. To be loved like that. It seems inhuman. It seems impossible. But I know it exists and therefore how can my heart ever settle for less?

I just thought about the Apostle Paul being struck down and then about Scott. I don’t know why.

Well, I’m going to bed and rest in the love of the Lord. And I’m going to believe tonight that something beautiful is coming soon.