I waver often back and forth from my old mentality of working for your love and the place that my reclaimed heart fights to stay, in the realm of a love that I could never work hard enough to gain. I’m still unfamiliar with that one. I still often live waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for the curtain to fall and someone to stand there laughing saying, “Gotcha!” But it doesn’t. Instead, you beckon me to that sweet place of a grace that is unfamiliar and yet so alive. One that my heart longs for and my mind rebuffs. Often. And loudly.

Yet in these first few days of this fast there has been no earth shaking moments of prayer. Just pull myself out of bed moments. Torturous headaches. Stomach growling. Shaking hands. Multiple trips to the bathroom from the perpetual injection of liquids and a feeling that I’m not acting very holy on this journey toward holiness. In fact, I don’t even want to be around me. And in the middle of it all I have to call Comcast! And that strips me bare of any tiny speck of holiness that might have even been on the horizon- looming in the distance.

And here I sit. Finally at almost seven in the evening, in a day that has been packed with meetings- prayer time with our ministry team – which had me asking even more questions about where the new wave of release from this time of consecration had ran off to. And feeling even greater defeat in this effort.

God is it me? Did you ask me to do this? Did I miss you this year? Am I not committed enough? And then I pick up my devotion. The one the demands of the day has pushed into the evening. And Philip Yancey’s words speak to my soul. And I realize what I’m doing in this season of sacrifice is really very simple. I am saying to you in the beginning of this year, I love you. I really do. In my deepest most unholy places I love you. I desire you. I do. Of all the people I enjoy hanging out with the most it’s you. In our quiet moments. In our noisy moments. In my questioning moments. In the times when I can’t speak or can’t quit talking. I desire you. And I need you. Wow, that one is a desperate one. More than a coke. More than fried chicken. More than all the things I would love to be chowing down on right now I need you. And this is why I fast.

And what I can trust, is that in the middle of all of that you are there. You see. You know. And you are able to look so past the flesh and the stuff and go straight down into my heart. And I can know that even if my heart condemns me you are greater than my heart.

There are days I feel like Simon the Pharisee as my friend Beth said today. But then you remind me, no, you are the prostitute with the alabaster box who wiped my feet with her hair and washed them with her tears. May I never forget how you see me, in spite of me.