Deep inside I know that I long for transcendence; I desire to be part of something larger that myself and out of the ordinary. I think about my life and I agree… only two things had pierced my heart: beauty and affliction.
Sometimes I feel that there’s nowhere I really belong or even want to belong, and this brings loneliness, an emptiness, a kind of ache and longing for something and someone I cannot quite define. Then I realize that instead of a love affair with God, my life feels more like a series of repetitive behaviors, like reading the same chapter of a book or writing the same novel over and over… dividing my heart in two parts. One invites me to trust and the other on self-reliance. A voice whispers that I was made for something special and for someone good – I smile – but my mind screams that if I don’t want so much I wont be so vulnerable and I ended up silencing the longing. I am afraid that I am loosing heart.
I deny the wounds and try to minimize them by living a shallow optimism that frequently becomes a demand or I despair.
I am trying to make sense out of my experiences and I think that something really important, perhaps even glorious is taking place, and yet it all seems so random; story is the language of my heart and I am trying to preserve the romance in someway. God, why did you allow this to happen to me? What will you allow to happen next? I whisper in my weariness; seduced by a God that both attracts me with his boldness and energy and repels me with his willingness to place me in mortal danger. Hunger for meaning? Still there, I must literally kill my heart if I want to escape the play. I groan and I wonder… if I could only understand his heart more clearly…
I hope that God will be my hero, once again; harmed by those on whom my hopes where set. Which for me is the worst pain of human experience.
If only my beloved were here. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve even been noticed, thinking about the part I find my self playing, the self I put on like a custom, who cast me in this role?
No amount of positive thinking or self-affirmation can help, but I still want to live my life before the eyes of another… am I the only one? So, once that I find something that brings me some attention, I have to keep it going or I risk the loss of attention.
A few people believe that they have never been wanted for their heart, their truest selves. That terrifies me, but still the fact that God wants my heart seems to good to be true. In the Bible, He said this: “when you have been stripped naked and ravished, your hearts will again call out to me for rescue and I will come and destroy all your enemies,” I wonder if I have been stripped naked and ravished yet.
Have you ever been shocked to find one day that the one you loved so deeply and who you thought loved you just as passionately, had been dating other person, and more over, was spending more time with your worst enemy? Well… God has. That amazes me. And comforts me, because I know that he will understand all my sad feelings ever. What could hurt more that that?
Sometimes I need to acknowledge that a particular emotion is there but simply continue to live by faith, I learn to cover it on the outside convinced that it’s just me, and I would be roundly scorned if I were to admit this things inside to others. Afraid of looking stupid, as a really good friend would say.
Faced with such a mystery and irritating vagueness I try to be passionate about my faith but the fiery embers that once sustained it have turned to cool gray ash, the evidence that life was indeed once present. So I entertain myself as well as possible with many good things in and off themselves, but I find myself doing them more and more to quiet the heart voice that tells me I have given up what is most important to me.
Gerald May said that Addiction is the most powerful psychic enemy of humanity’s desire for God, and I am speechless.
I know I’ve been rescued, but I don’t understand, how is God wooing at me with flat tires, bounced checks and rained-out picnics? I am caught up in the sociodrama of my small story.
My desire is wild because it was made for a wild God. I get that. I am tired to hear Christian counsel with three steps to this and seven steps to that, and a principle for everything to hunker down and make life work here and now. That is in fact an effort not to journey at all.
Satan says, “things will never change”; if I live it is because God offers an intimacy much more sensuous, much more exotic and wild than anything, even than sex itself.
I am walking around disturbed, feeling as if there was something deep inside that I needed to put into words but I couldn’t quite capture, the “something” is and anxiety that I don’t even clearly understand, but I will not anesthetize it with other lovers, in other words bad habits; spiritual abiding places or comforters.
I want to be someone’s beauty and I find people that admonish me with scriptures on serving others, I turn around and I find myself in the middle of the desert, removed from the materialism, entertainment diversion and busyness. I try to pray but my mind fills with busy disconnected petitions that start with, “God help me to do that, have faith and read your word more.” I sense my own emptiness, so I sit down and listen to my heart… what I hear nothing in this world can satisfy and what I used to like seems even more insipid.
My revulsion to the ugly is the counterpart to my desire for beauty, something or someone that could take my breath away.
Just try coming alive and the world will hate you for it. But for me, I cannot walk away; I am trapped by my desire waiting with eager anticipation for what is to come. I realize that to want is to suffer, so many have chosen simply not to want much and be safe that way, but that is godless.
It seems impossible that the truth about the death and resurrection of Jesus could become lost or rote, but it happens all the time.
Part of my Journey, is a journey backward into my stories to bring it all into the light of romance for their proper interpretation I return to for some deep reasons in my heart.
And then I noticed, someone has romanced me with Pastel Sunsets.
Author: Esther Iturralde
Email: [email protected]
What is the name of your article: Pastel Sunsets
Author Bio: I am a designer and a life coach, but above all, I am God’s daughter, I am filled with dreams, ambition and the desire to love hard.
Link to social media or website: https://www.estheriturralde.
