It’s too intense!

An introduction to “Don’t you dare love me!”

“It’s too intense to be published for readers on the public market”

Intended, I guess as constructive criticism, these words took root. I know they weren’t meant to be offensive and I trust this one more than most, but to say it is too intense, is to attack at the very heart of this journey, and myself. The entries written on this journey are raw and contain an intentional vulnerability. I’ve both experienced the intense nature of Your heart in this, God, and have allowed myself to explore the feelings deep within my own heart and mind to produce an honesty to the brokenness and hidden thoughts that as humanity we choose not to expose. I feel acutely that the nature of this pain You feel towards Your beloved is somber and earnest, it is intense. You have given me precious insight into Your heart.

  

They needed someone who was prepared to go deep into the places that they had carefully barricaded. The places in their hearts where they had been deeply hurt, where lies about You, and themselves and life and others had been formed and become the truths from which their lives were lived. I loved them, with the Love You had given me for them, and so I left the safe shores of talking about the weather, and entered with them into the deep abyss of their pain. They made themselves vulnerable and deserved nothing less from me than an impassioned ardency towards their exposed hearts. The nature of their vulnerability was of great risk to them, it demanded trust, it needed unconditional love, and I gave myself to those things, treating every thought and feeling they laid open as a special treasure to be regarded with the same degree of preciousness as the risk it took for them to make it be made known. They needed someone who was as serious in their vulnerability as they were in the extreme effort it took to expose themselves. I didn’t know the answers to many of their circumstances, I was in over my head many times, but I loved them and treasured every disclosed word as precious. Their heart cried out, “Don’t you dare love me!” Love had failed and hurt them, and so they had walls of protection built high and wide where nothing could penetrate in order to survive their day to day existence, but those walls were crumbling despite the effort to maintain them, and many days revealed an existence inside that refused to be held together, and their pain leaked. At least to me, it did, because I knew them intimately.

You lead me here. You taught me here about pain and love. I discovered Perfect Love here. You revealed Yourself to me here – both Your own personal pain and Your great love, and it has been an intense journey, but one I am deeply appreciative of and honoured to have been entrusted with. And because of the intense nature of their pain, I examined my own heart and mind as honestly and as raw as I could. I had not been hurt by life as they had, yet my heart revealed a brokenness common to humanity that has found itself lost from the place of Perfect Love that we were designed to live from, and I have walls and barriers, lies and wrong truths about You, just as they had. And it was from here, that I began to write down the things I’d learned, refusing to let these words be another journal that touched the surface, another story that just spoke about the weather, but didn’t go deeper to the fear of the storm that lay beneath. People need to understand the severity of brokenness and sin in their lives. People need to know that it has ruined them. And they need to know the depths of Your love and what this love can do. I have chosen to write in an intense, deep, vulnerable way, because of the nature of our brokenness and the heart You have for us. It has been purposeful. It has revealed my heart’s nature as well as Your own, and it has been with a resolute intentionality to be authentic.

The words spoken to me, though I choose to not let the offense cause resentment and hurt inside, hit my heart. Though it has been said, I guess I should be honoured by this comment, for intense is exactly its purpose.

Don’t you dare love me…

 

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