The Moment it Started

I don’t know the moment it started.

I am not talking about the first time we met  – I remember that well enough. The pastor of the small church couldn’t (didn’t want to?) deal with my problems so he referred me to you – the newest member of the church staff. The Youth Worker, freshly arrived from London. You seemed quiet, unsure, which at the time I interpreted as not being interested, although you later told me you found it intimidating, the way he expected you to deal with it right there and then.

I don’t know the moment it started. Perhaps it was the sum of several moments.

The moment I walked into church and the sun was streaming in and you were playing your guitar in a blue dress with bare feet, free before God. And I longed to kick my shoes off too.

The moment we were helping to tidy the churchyard and I sat with you and was strangely fixated on your arms, bare, brown, muscled.

The moment I shared with you that terrible thing that I had never told anyone. And you listened. And you comforted. And you didn’t think of me differently.

The moment your brother asked me to look after you and I couldn’t understand why.

Later, in the startling light of discovery, in the confusion of being convicted of sin, in the pain of separation, these were the things I pieced together of you. What made me love you? Your arms, your guitar, your dress, your touch, sudden, unexpected as the wind?

You were exiled to South Africa by well-meaning people. The way to break the dependency, they said. Wait upon the Lord. Be convicted. Walk away from relational idolatry. Don’t contact each other.

You wrote me letters. We were waiting for God to come and pull us away from each other. We encouraged each other to seek Him. In the back of my mind I replayed our first kiss over and over again. But, purity and holiness! Wait and he’ll save us from ourselves…

But He just loved. And you came home. Home to me, on the station platform in the cold air. The delayed train added agonising extra minutes to our time apart.

What made you take such a startling leap away from the life you knew, for me? What strength, from whom, helped you to start all over again? What held you together as your friends left you, one by one, refusing to condone this “lifestyle” of yours (if we were heterosexual, it would have been called love. And they would have all been so proud and pleased for you and us)?

I don’t think many people thought we’d last, but here we are, all these years later.

And, two years ago today, we took all of our love and fears and questions and desires and we gathered our families and our friends together and we said words of promise to each other – words that some would deny us, but that were our words, that could not be taken away.

May I never feel the need or have the urge to leave you.

I choose to make my home with you.

Where you go, I go, travelling with you, keeping you warm at night.

Where you live, I’ll live. We will make a home together and be a family.

Your people are my people and I will love and respect them.

My people are your people. They love you almost as much as I do.

Your God is my God, and we will serve and worship our God together.

This is my promise for as long as I live.

I don’t know the moment it started. Perhaps it was the sum of several moments, moments that still continue, into our future. Together.

My God in the Hidden Places

My God in the hidden places,
Beautiful Beloved,
Your heart is pure.
I wait, You will come
Even into this mess
For me
For you desire it
And I will not fight it.
Provide for me a safe place
And enough
Undo my holding on.
I give up. I am Yours.
Those who hurt me
are yours too.
You will deal with them.
I am letting go
I am running to
the shadow of Your wings,
Your deliverance – don’t
let me get in the way of myself!
For I am Yours
And this is Yours
Forever and ever. Amen.

The Fearful Self

(Photo credit: asteriosm)

A Part of you was left behind very early in your life: the part that never felt completely received. It is full of fears. Meanwhile, you grow up with many survival skills. But you want your self to be one. So you have to bring home the part of you that was left behind. That is not easy, because you have become quite a formidable person, and your fearful part does not yet know if it can safely dwell with you. Your grown-up self has to become very childlike – hospitable, gentle, and caring – so your anxious self can return home and feel safe. [...] Be patient. When you feel lonely, stay with your loneliness. Avoid the temptation to let your fearful self run off. Let it teach you its wisdom; let it tell you that you can live instead of just surviving.

Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love

A couple of weeks ago I felt completely overwhelmed by life. There was a trigger, but it was a relatively small one. I was at my desk when I received an email criticising something I had – accidently – done that had offended someone. I had a reaction so completely different to the usual that it took my breath away. Normally I would fight – inwardly if not outwardly – but my gut reaction was intense shame, followed by a physical desire to get under my desk and hide. It was so strong that I ”told myself off” – a grown woman does not, after all, go under her desk. I am bigger than that, stronger. And I know God.

Later the same day something much bigger happened, something that needed my attention right away. It was scary but I was grown-up and I dealt with it the best I could.

And then I went home, washed the dishes, fed the dog and then calmly went upstairs. I shut the door. I allowed myself to sit under the desk. There was some crying, and then silence.

Sometime after the crying stopped, I let the fearful voice speak to me. I let her in.  I let her speak, I asked her gentle questions – why don’t you feel safe?

She answered. I cared for her. I tried to be like a mother – soothing, gentle, calm. Loving.

She is a child and she doesn’t know all the answers. But she has a voice and I am happy to speak with her, to find this part of me and “bring her home.” She’s not always there but sometimes she is – I picture her skipping alongside me. She notices things as we go, things that I would never notice. She likes stopping to stroke the horses on the path through the fields. She is good at writing stories and she sometimes asks to go look in shops – just looking.

I am aware that this probably sounds all kinds of crazy. I thought it was, until I read that passage from Nouwen above. If he is right, she is the part of me, left behind, that can teach me how to love instead of surviving.

I would dearly like that.