whole heart

This one is a bit scary to write because there's a ledge I have to leap off but I'm too afraid and in the busy life that is my life writing this blog is hopefully going to be part of the run up. By the end of this, I might have jumped.

I might be flying.

Or I might cop out and huddle under a table somewhere refusing to look Jesus in the eye. We shall see. John's watching movies with the team downstairs and I could just jack this in, turn off David Crowder Band and go back to normal. We shall see. This might be too hard to write and too scary to accept. We shall see.

Lately I have been surrounded by women, by real life women and also whispers of women who others know well, women who have shaken my complacency. Women of such strength that I'm left in awe, capable of such holiness that their lives fly like meteors tearing through the sky that holds us back from heaven. Women who sacrifice like it's nothing, who live like what they want is nothing. Who adopt eight children in a foreign land. Who move to the walled city. Who pay thousands of dollars to return children to a new home they've not yet known. Who work, carry, create, clean, try, try, and try to make their homes places of refuge. Of joy. Of beauty.

I could write a press release that makes me look like one of those women. I live in Ukraine, working with orphans, I moved here with a seven month old baby and opened my home to a teenage girl, mother of two now. Blah, blahdy blah.

I've opened my home but I haven't opened my heart and so my home is a shadow of what it could be.
I should probably try to explain a bit - as if the wonderings of this wandering mind could ever be properly understood. Hah.

I'm here and I'm doing the job, I'm cooking and learning language and washing clothes and taking photos and so far so 'successful'. But there is so much of myself that I am holding back for nobody other than me. In the name of boundaries, in the name of comforts, in the name of avoiding hurt here I am looking like a missionary but unable to love my God or my girls because this heart of mine is reserved. For me. By me. Selfish and scared and cynical.
To explain further: Alla lives in my home and I care about her but would I be destroyed of she quits us? Would my heart break? Would I search the world to find her again?
Would I even skip a meal?
I'm not loving whole heartedly so how can  my heart be whole? Not possible.

My God is too wonderful to accept, or indeed offer, anything other than everything. Those women I am hearing about and meeting are women who have stood on the ledge, looked up to His sky full of the cross, full of His sacrifice, full of His love and they have flung their arms apart and leapt spinning into Him.
Not 6 days a week, not until the toddler's in bed and then it's movie time, not until they've had enough and it's me-time, not just when they're doing ministry, not when the person they've committed to is behaving in a pleasing manner. Not part time. No boundaries from God.
No boundaries with Him.
No secret areas of hurt. No topic off limits. No reservations. No privacy. No lies.

Life, offered with a whole heart flying into the blue, untethered by selfishness. Free.

He's asking this of me. He wants all of my life, all of my priorities, all of my time, all of my perspectives, all of my behaviours, all of my thoughts. Free.

And so I say this to Him, to you LORD of this bursting heart that only really feels it's own beats when I'm dancing with you. To you I say this...

Yes.
Take this house,
take these hands,
take my days,
take my sleeps,
take my womb and my feet and my spine,
take the things I want
take the things I think I need
take the things I think are beautiful
take my time
my downtime, my stressed time,
everything I think I should be doing,
all my petty selfishness and my schedules that build the walls around everything I ever have to give,
my internet time,
my photo time,
my cooking time,
my life as yours. All of it. Don't let me put bits of me in a box away from you.

Sick of mediocre, sick of how unloving I can apparently be. I want more.

'Real love isn't afraid to bleed' well I think you were a lot afraid and you did it anyway. You can have all of me.

And then, maybe, Jesus, you can give Alla and Beth and whoever is next a mum who tears holes in the pain that this world builds around people. Maybe I could meet Alla's eyes without fear or suspicion, weilding weapons that scare the crap out of the devil. A woman who brings light into those nasty corners where the demons thought they were safe, a mother who proclaims healing over those who are hers and who stands over them like the lioness she was always meant to be. A woman full of the beauty of you who makes gardens flourish, a girl who couldn't care less about the praise of magazines but prefers instead to walk through life unconsciously drawing the beauty out in the damaged girls for whom she bakes cakes. A woman whose presence turns the scars of rape into flawless, spotless gowns for her brides. Who takes her joy when it is given and who trusts that it will come, who doesn't control or scheme or plot but instead flows around others, singing and sometimes headbanging and sometimes shocking everybody because controversy comes from what is honest. Who doesn't need anyone to say well done because she knows you have already done everything as well as it could ever be.

And I know this is a statement of intent, I know I'm small and that's ok. I know you just love that I'm trying to listen to you but can you take these words and make them truth? Can you take all of my heart and when I'm not offering it can you remind me that you still give me all of yours, everyday?

Take me down, take down my walls and open me to Alla. Open me to my kids, not just the ones that came from my body, give me love and all the pain that can bring because of the joy and healing that is so desperately needed in this house.

Make me whole hearted.
Give me a whole heart.
So your will can be done, and your kingdom can come, in this thing called life.

Hopefully in the post below this one there's a youtube video of the song I was listening to while I wrote this, it's amazing. Turn it up loud. Quite music is stupid.