\\ Beautiful Broken August \\

I shut my tractor off for the day and wiped the dust from my windows, breathing in the sticky wind that darkened my face and filled my lungs, even from inside the air-conditioned comfort of my cab. The days had been hot, Mike said when he came to fill up my tractor with diesel. I wouldn't really know, for I was in the cab from the time the sun came up until it was well on its way down. The days had been long. I was tired. My body ached for sleep, for the comfort of the glance of human eyes or the touch of a human hand, but the times were of aloneness, something I once cherished but now had grown to dread.

The Lord had told me in July that August would be a month of being laid bare. I was ecstatic (really, I'm not sure how), because I knew I would be gaining something precious by being stretched past the things I depend on. Now I felt... 

Broken. Laid low. Desperate. All those words seemed glamorous and Christian before-the-fact but now that they're here, make me want to wither up like my neglected back-porch oregano plant and die.

I started up Steve (my Ford Tempo) and began the long drive home, stretching my fingers out at the sweet wind as if trying to catch it. The sunset made my heart ache. I didn't even reach for my camera. It was too sacred and full of awe to try and explain second-hand. It soon faded to a deep pink above the purple hills, and the ache in my heart grew stronger, as if grieving that it would soon fade. 

I am so full of knowledge. Knowing, knowing, knowing, talking, preaching, telling, showing, reaching, grasping at more, more, why can't I have more, God, when I am so hungry, but somehow, there is still an ache here in my chest, and I cannot tell why. You know my heart and what I ask of You and You give all good things to Your children. I feel pressed like a grape, like my guts are spilled out for all the angels to watch and see. How do I love as You do? Love those who speak evil of me, those who I want to judge with words that are Yours and not mine, love though my heart longs to hate, love like You tell me to love. I do not know my own self, it seems, for the ways of my own heart are full of pride and deceit. I am weak, Father, and I can't do this, cannot be righteous, cannot have a pure heart like You, cannot love...

The song pounds in my head, the one that I listened to last night through my one functional earphone, as present as the stale-coffee smell in my nose and the Orange-tinged dust in the air all around me.

I will remove the names of your Lovers

Even the memory of their face fades away

I will write on you My name forever

I will be known by you as Faithful and True

See, I am drawing you to Me.

I weep as the walls of pride come crashing down, the walls I had erected as a tribute to the lover I had worshipped, the lover of Independence and Rebellion, The Love of self I so desperately clung to as it passed away. It was dying. I was dying. And still, the eyes of my True Lover burned for me.

You cannot come alive unless you die.

And again, I cry out for the release of what I tightly hold. The humble cry of a child at the end of her own strength. "Daddy, take my heart!" The little seed cries as it sheds its outer shell in the darkness of the earth. Not inches away lies light and clear air and the Sun, Oh! The sun! 

Truly, I want to grow. I've only scratched the surface of You. But I feel helpless to start, helpless to help anything. I need You. I need Your glorious Presence. I know nothing else. That is all. That is all.