What about vulnerability?

As I was drumming my fingers on my desk this morning, I noticed that the fingers on one hand made a different sound than those on the other.

That's because of the thick callouses on the tips of my fingers of my left hand (I play my steel string acoustic guitar as often as I possibly can.) Each one of them has become incredibly resilient, like very thick leather... almost like plastic, sometimes. It's wonderful because I no longer get painful, red blisters. My fingers have become impervious to the slicing of the strings! But neither can they feel anything. They've lost all sensitivity to the point that I have to use my other fingers if I actually want to feel something. Seriously, they're about as useful in that department as fingers of stone.

Funny thing, callouses. Protectants. Barriers. They're awfully two-way. They don't let anything in, and they don't let anything out. They keep us from being hurt from the outside... and from feeling on the inside.

Lately I've found myself miserable and in strange moods, to my perplexity and dismay - an odd combination of anger and loneliness. Sometimes even a bit bitter about certain things, not entirely sure as to why, and hating deeply that I felt that way. All that mattered to me, largely in the way of relationships (family, work or otherwise) seemed to deteriorate for no reason at all, despite my best efforts. I missed the bubbly, energetic, happy, optimistic girl I've almost always been.

In this frame of mind I could not sleep one night. It was nearing 2 AM. So I tried praying, reached for my Bible, then for the book "Captivating," by John and Stasi Eldridge, which I've been reading. [I don't fully endorse this book... Has some good sections, though.] It hit me like a baseball bat to the solar plexus.

Like you, there are seasons in my life when Jesus seems very near and seasons where I can't seen to find him at all. [...] All relationships ebb and flow.

The ebbing is to draw our hearts out in deeper longing. In the times of emptiness, an open heart notices. What are you feeling? Like a lonely girl missing her daddy? Like a teenage young woman feeling completely invisible, unseen? Often God allows these feelings to surface to help us go back to times when we have felt like this before. Notice also what you want to do -- how you handle your heart. Are you shutting down in anger? Turning to food? To others?

What is crucial is that, this time, we handle our hearts differently.

We ask our Lover to come for us, and we keep our hearts open for his coming. We choose not to shut down. We let the tears come. We allow the ache to swell into a longing prayer for God. [...]

Here is how the flow goes in Hosea. First, God says he will thwart our efforts to find life apart from him.

"Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them." Hosea 2:6-7

He does this in order to wear us out, to get us to turn back to him in thirsty longing. Then he begins to woo us. He often takes us aside from every other source of comfort so he alone can have our heart's attention.

"...I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her." Hosea 2:14

This verse drew me in, for I have often described myself as having been led into a complete and utter desert right now, spiritually. I looked up the rest of the passage, and hot tears began to flow down my face at what I read:

"There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor ["trouble"] a door of hope. Then she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. 'In that day,' declares the Lord, 'you will call me "my husband"; you will no longer call me "my master."' Hosea 2:15-16

I cannot even express how those words spoke to me, as though they were meant just for me. I am indeed in a valley of trouble right now; there is an issue of complete and utter confusion for me. In the days of my youth and the day I came home after the Egypt DTS were truly the happiest times of my life. How, indeed, there are other things of life I would gladly chase - even very good things - if the Lord had not closed doors and "walled me in so that I could not find my way."

It is then, when alone with him and myself, that I come face-to-face with inner struggles and things which need to change. How, oh how I have been longing! And all the while my Lord says, "I am here. I know you have no one to trust or confide in. Be vulnerable with me. You can be. Stop trying to be so strong and impenetrable all the time."

Dear women out there, you who may know this feeling... Are you chasing "other lovers?" They can be anything. I know it firsthand. It's different for everyone. Movies, friends, career, fashion, food, men, the internet, gossip, your own independence... even church involvement. Busyness. Anything to keep us from coming face-to-face, in the piercing silence, with ourselves and with the most important relationship we have, the only man who can perfectly satisfy every possible need and desire of our hearts - Jesus.

The Lord invites me come and weep. Come and fall apart. Come and be healed. With him, my Lover, not with others. He invites me come and drop the shields which I grip so tightly; to stop defending myself; to stop being enough for myself.

No one, and especially no woman, has one hundred percent "got it together," one hundred percent of the time. There is a lot to be said for strength and capability and bravado. But face it... it is our vulnerability that makes us women. Our being the weaker vessel. Let's not cringe at that just because society has conditioned us to do so. Ironic how in being "empowered" we have actually been stripped of the power, if you will, that was given us by God - that prize of femininity which we are so quick to try to rid ourselves of in disgust. Interesting how, despite all the strides of the feminist movement to make the male species obsolete and unnecessary for all these years, at the core of every woman there is still the burning desire to be fought for, rescued and protected. Granted, most these days pass it off as a girlish fairytale dream. But it is still there. (So yeah, instead of going on and on, I'll just highly recommend the book, "Captivating!" :))

I don't normally share such intimate details of my inner/spiritual life. But I know there are plenty of women out there struggling as I have in the past, and sometimes still do. If sharing this helps by encouraging just one other girl find her heavenly Prince, then it is well worth it. :)