Tuesday, February 9, 2010

A Good Thing

It blew my mind, it bled me dry, it hit me like a long goodbye,
and nobody here knows better than I that it’s a good thing.

It’ll fall like rain on your parade, laugh at the plans that you tried to make, it’ll wear you down till your heart just breaks and it’s a good thing. It’ll take just a little too much. It’ll burn you like a cinder till you’re tender to the touch.

It’ll follow you down to the ruin of your great divide, and open the wounds that you tried to hide. And there in the rubble of the heart that died you’ll find a good thing. Love is a good thing.
-Andrew Peterson-

This song hit me hard. I’ve felt all of those things. I’ve said the long goodbye; had plans blow up in my face. I’m worn down and broken, burnt and tender, wounded and exposed. I’ve been sifting through the rubble lately trying to make some sense of it all. Trying to find a reason to hope – something to hang my faith on. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me. I know people who can just believe. Who seem to hope by default. I’m a Christian, but I don’t know how to just live it. I have to choose it. Every day, I have to choose it again and again. Sometimes it seems like such an obvious decision and others it takes everything I have. It doesn’t come natural to me.

This song, or the truth it contains, is huge for me because it makes that decision just a little easier. I understand that God is love, I feel loved by him. It’s just that I’ve never thought about it being the power of his love that drives me brokenness. I know this is a necessary part of the process for me, but with the complexity of God it’s difficult to be sure what about him is wreaking this havoc. I’m not sure I’m really getting to it here. The difference seems so subtle as to at first appear irrelevant, but the distinction couldn’t be more powerful for me. I know God is love and I thought that it was out of love that he chose to do these things to me. Like he was actively burning and breaking me. It’s more that this is just what happens when the created is loved by the creator, when imperfect is loved by perfection.

The only thing I can think to compare it to is the way my love makes my daughter feel safe. I don’t tell her she’s safe, at two she wouldn’t understand it anyway. She doesn’t see me lock the doors of know that I have a gun in the dresser. My love for her doesn’t drive me to show her these things so she can feel safe, but when she lays down at night it’s my love the allows her to sleep in the dark. God doesn’t break me because he loves me - he loves me and that breaks me. The difference is subtle, but it’s what allows me to sleep at night.