Forwarding Address

Running tonight. Like my sweat, when I saw what He saw grief and regret oozed out of me. It's time to move again, and my communication with God has hit a wall. I've been making sense of it to myself through the lens of circumstance:

You are sad to leave California. You are overwhelmed by the "Prep for Indiana" task List. You need to eat more vegetables. Run more. Read more. Pray more. Sleep more.

God cut through my chaos with one gentle word: When you talk to Me, Daughter, you don't believe I love you. So when you ask for My help it's reluctant and guilty, without the expectation of My reply. You wear yourself out asking.

Hosea gives me Hope. This is God's strategy, His remedy for my Doubt:

"I will allure you. I will lead you into the desert and speak tenderly to you" (2:14). I've never been in love. Thus far in my Journey I've been too fearfully self-protective for that nonsense. But I'm cracking. And love is becoming attractive, magnetic. His love is doing that to me, undoing me, wooing me.

So how does love respond to that kind of self-revelation? I'm encouraged to say that my immediate response was a plea for Him to please, please forgive me! for not believing the best about Him, for doubting His good heart, and for forgetting all His affection lavished upon me.

When I talk with God now about my departure next week for a 2-month Iraq prep back in Indiana, when I remember to Him the precious ones I leave behind, when I cry to Him for help hunting down that bike box and packing up my books and transferring the Chevy title to James, when I lay down exhausted at day's end and thank Him for living it WITH me may my sweat and grief remind me of our run, His revelation, and the realness of His love.