new bucket

… So that night I tossed and turned rolling everything over in my mind. What could he possibly mean telling me that I don't know myself?

Sometimes when I am trying to work out a problem in my head I go back to the beginning … I go back and think on Genesis. Why did God create? What is this all for? How does everything fit in? … these are all the questions that get me thinking. God didn't create because He was bored - He created because that is who He is - He is a creator. What was His purpose in creating humans? … He said - Let us create in our own image - male and female he created them. He wanted someone to be like Him … to share His creation with. He wanted intimacy … He was there walking in the garden with Adam and Eve. That is also why he needed humans to have a choice … why else have a forbidden tree in the garden? He wanted us to CHOOSE him. Because obligatory worship is crap compared with loving adoration. He wants to share Himself -- so He wants us to willingly share ourselves with Him. That makes sense.

Then I thought back to the first day that we sat and talked with S and G. One of the questions that S asked was if my spiritual life were a bucket … where are its leaks? I sat and thought about that a minute and then said - I don't have a bucket anymore … my bucket was taken away. After the women's retreat in September … I felt like the season of lament that I had been in for the previous 2 years was over. A page had turned - but it was blank and I had no idea what it was supposed to be filled with. I prayed and asked God if I was meant to go out and DO something. I was getting antsy - ready for something else to do, experience, be, become, learn … I didn't care which - just something instead of nothing. But He hadn't spoken yet…

Also that night before bed my husband and I had sex. This is always a good indicator of how connected I am with him, myself, and with the Lord. An act of intimacy should be. It reveals something deep within of our hearts… something words have a hard time touching. Sex has been difficult for the last 2 and 1/2 years. My husband is fine - its always me. I can't seem to get my body to feel in the normal fashion. It's been frustrating … and this particular night was no different. And I realized as I was pondering everything later that night that the reason I can't feel my body - is because I am disengaged on the inside. I may be able to laugh again and smile - instead of the insane numbness I felt throughout the summer … but I was still not ALL there. Something was still missing. I realized that I am unable to feel intimate while we are having sex… that my biggest hope for the whole experience will be for my body to just go along with it - so that my husband is satisfied in some way. Of course this is never really satisfying for either of us. BUT admitting this to myself was huge, it was something I instinctively had known but had never put into words.

I began to put all of these pieces together … along with the quote from earlier that day: Only 2 things pierce the soul: pain and beauty. Lack of intimacy. No bucket. And throw in a dash of - 'you don't know yourself'… and the swirling thoughts continued.

If intimacy is the entire purpose of everything … the very reason God creates … then this silence is all about creating more of it. God is not capricious. He loves me, this silence has purpose - it has a plan. If His end goal - is also the exact thing that I want more than anything - then 'intimacy' must be the very place He is taking me (of course to me this seems like the craziest path to get there …). Lament was over - my bucket taken away. The page was turned ready to be written on - just WAITING. I realized that the old bucket was full of my personal shit. All my pain. It was filled with shame and sin. It was full of everything that I had purged over the last 2 years. I had mourned and cried and lamented - moving, and homeschooling, friendships, homes, place, status - pretty much everything had been stripped away. BUT mostly the silence… the frustrating infuriating silence. I banged my fist on God's door every day begging for the one thing I know I should want more than anything else - intimacy. Yet He withheld it from me. Why?

I needed a new bucket.

I simply could not go to the new places I wanted to go with my old shit-filled bucket in tow.

It has taken the last 2 and 1/2 years and a lot of silence to finish filling the old bucket. Silence was the final ingredient to get the last clinging pile of crap to shed off into the bucket. There were places within that I was never going to go without that silence as a motivator … no - not even the silence - but the hope of something more than silence. I would do anything that God called me to because I have experienced my Summer of Jesus. That outpouring of love during that summer 6 years ago continually calls me to intimacy.

So God took that old bucket away (hence the reason I have felt less burdened these last few months since September).

But then as I was laying in bed pondering all of these things - EVERYTHING - began to click into place. I KNOW my pain. I don't know my BEAUTY. I have bits … but as a whole it has been unexplored. This is why I can't be intimate during sex … this is why my body won't feel. THIS is the bucket that God wants me to fill! If I want to get to the place where I am intimate with the Lord - to know His mind, His love, our union … then I have to fill THIS bucket. How can I know God well if I am only seeing Him from one perspective? How can I love Him well when I am loving out of the shit bucket? I can't - because it is only HALF of what I need.

Beauty has to pierce me just as much as my pain does. My mind has seen only one half of this equation, now I need the other half. So now I have a new bucket… and it's waiting to be filled. This one sounds way better.