I don’t know where I’m going, but I go there all the time.

I wanted so badly to be understood, to be seen, heard, valued. That’s what love is to me.

I’ve always struggled with attachment issues. I didn’t understand the concept, but I knew that I had problems with abandonment and rejection. I looked it up, read about it. I thought I was cursed, born into an unlucky family. I had very little hope that anything could change. I didn’t know it was also called trauma, and that it was due to emotional and sexual abuse in my childhood. It didn’t help that my parents made me feel like every single bad thought in my head would send me directly to hell. I didn’t understand the meaning of mercy. I couldn’t even imagine that such a thing, or such a one as Jesus, existed.

My self-worth was located somewhere at the bottom of the ocean. My relationships, both professional and romantic have never ended well, they have been what some people would call toxic, due to their transactional nature. Back then I called it love, chemistry, passion, but in retrospect, it was hell. I don’t want to generalize and say that there were no good moments, I still love every single person I’ve been with and been close to. I cherish plenty of beautiful memories, particularly the most painful, because that is what God used to help me grow. I can admit that I was partly to blame. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I also treated each of my ex-boyfriends like an object. I used each of them to fill my needs, without ever considering their needs. To love is to will the good of another. I am just now learning what that means.

I was always very attached to things, to places, to people. I turned them into idols. I pushed God to one side, and I venerated his creation, instead of worshipping the Creator. There’s extreme pain when I do that, it’s mostly because I have a deep sense that I’m not in right relationship to God, that I have stepped outside of his safety and protection, his presence. It’s the most excruciating ache in a place inside me I didn’t even know existed. It was only through the work of the Holy Spirit that I could come back from that hell, and into a new life of true healing and real love.

When I look back at all of my failed attempts at love, what I had believed to be love, they are merely caricatures of what I now perceive and understand to be love: a mystery that is being revealed to me each new day, for that is how the Lord works.

He moves forth patiently, quietly, and does not make a show of it. He moves with confidence, certitude, and grace. He approaches me calmly. He does not pressure me, or demand love from me; he waits, and forgives me for every single time I have turned away from him and tried to take advantage of him. He is just in his love; he teaches me how to value the kind of love that he offers me by drawing a line in the sand with his boundaries, and shows me what is and what isn’t under my control. His purity and perfection humble me. I fall to my knees.

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Lord, you’ve kept a collection of all my secret sighs, of every prayer I’ve uttered, and you don’t categorize or separate them based on feeling, mood, or intention. You don’t trash them or judge them. You keep all my bitter seeds of awkward love as signs of my growing affection, stored away in a sacred closet, unique to me and you.

You found me in the dark, crippled up in fear, hiding from a love I could not at the time comprehend. You took me and let me fall asleep in your shadow, where your glory and brilliance would not destroy me, but close enough that over time, I could get accustomed to your warmth, and learn to trust your smile.

I was brittle and rough, an asteroid looking for something to disrupt, but you caught me, and without gloves you polish me daily, rounding out the edges that protrude into your natural order. With your gentle words, you kiss every scar and zip up every wound.

You watch as I stumble over and over again, on the same stone, on my pride, on my need to prove myself worthy to you; and you don’t take away the stone. Instead, you teach me how to observe it, how to handle its significance and place in my life.

Like a parent watching his child in the playground, when I fall into a crevice, you don’t pull me out. You stand by the ledge, and with your words you help me find the protruding rocks that will lead me up towards you.

I cannot see you, but I know your voice. It comes down to me like snowflakes.

Your love does not seek its own; it seeks those who seek after it, for its own sake. It is self-effacing. It does not boast; it is meek and pure. It does not want to possess, and yet, when I finally accept it, it consumes me whole.

I was made for this: to abide in you, and for you to abide in me.

You predestined a time when it was right and good to open my eyes to the truth; a time for me to shed this skin, this shell I was holed up in for so long. With your Holy Spirit you gave me life, a new mind, a kingdom made of something for which I have no words yet; a kingdom of love, a love such that I don’t fully understand.

I need to stop trying to guess your every move.

You are the one, three in one, the only one I need, and yet you also show up in every person. We are all made in your image, to love and to care for each other. You know me better than I know myself, but I forget you are there sometimes. Help me to pay attention, to put myself aside long enough to put you first in my life. Send me the words you’d like me to write. Show me how I can serve you with the gifts you’ve given me. Make me humble, so I can learn to listen to your voice, and to discern what you want from me. Please throw me off my high horse, like Saul, knock me down so that I can stop jumping to conclusions. Show me how to love you the way that you love me. I give you the reins to my heart, my will. I surrender everything to you. Forgive my anger, my frustration, my reactions, and my resistance to your will, thinking again, as usual, that I know better. Help me to shut up and listen, to be still, and patient. Help me to trust you with my life. As Hannah did with Samuel in the Bible, my mother promised and dedicated my life to you. Take me, Lord. Mold me; shape me into what you want me to be. Here is your servant, listening and ready.