FIND ME
4 AM. Torn by the timeless tyranny of night fears. This and that, distorted to nightmare proportions, claw my soul to some drowsy semi-awake awareness that my head is throbbing and my body shaking. Deep sigh.
I’ve been here before. I know He will find me here. And the song that found me last night on someone’s Facebook feed finds me again…
“I fall down on the ground
Press my face against the earth
Till my heart it rises over me head.”
My head is exhausted. My heart is hollow. I am an empty vessel to be filled.
And then I sense His assuring presence in the midst of it. “I understand why you’re shivering. I hold all your insecurities tenderly in My hand. I am not asking you to snap out of it, but to breathe through it. Face your fears in the daylight with Me, and I will help you and heal you, one by one, step by step. In the night, My song is with you”
And suddenly I ache only for His touch. Nothing else matters.
“Like the dust that You first held
In the Garden where You knelt
Pull me up against Your face again
Till the breaths of Your hope
Fill the depths of my soul
Till all I know is I’ve been found by love.”
And I remember others times fears have shredded my sense of safety and undermined the very identity for which He died. Times when worthlessness and abandonment shrouded me with their deflating, dark lies.
And dearly loved faces of those who found me there, whose hearts hold mine, parade through my memory. Their eyes caressing me with the strongest commitments of earth, their voices penetrating my rejection with acceptance. Even in the most lonely seasons, when my battered soul hurt too much to recognize it, I see now that Jesus was always there, reaching towards me though one kindness or another…
“I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them.” (Hoses 11:4)
As I rise to face the day, the song washes my inner windows again and again till I see His love in the eyes of those I encounter. Nothing has changed but the filter through which I perceive. Rather than straining out the good to meditate on the bad, it’s flipped so I receive His love in its many expressions and sift out the voices of darkness.
And I long to be His touch of this gently healing Presence in human kindness wherever I can. He finds us. Every time.
“Find me grateful
Find me thankful
Find me on my knees
Find me dreaming
Find me singing
Find me lost in your grace”
(Lyrics from Jonathan David and Melissa Helser’s Find Me)
