Resurrection Within
Resurrection never proved so daring.
My dead heart, how I search for any sign of life within.
But, God is in the business of miracles. Of new creation, restoration, calling forth what once was waste now into wonder.
How to hope? How to hold my dreams in my hand? How to believe He sees all of me and yearns to breathe fresh feeling into my bones? So long I’ve been stale of heart, glossed it over, shrunk it away. This life has burned its flesh, scarred my soul, and terrified me to try living with my heart again.
To know no emotion is to know nothing at all.
I have merely existed, no nod to beauty that spreads before me, no allowance of lips spread in smile, or true joy full in the springs of my soul.
I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this? —John 11:25-26 (NIV)
Do I believe? It is torment to trust God with my most delicate pieces. I am so afraid that He will learn my secret desires and struggles, coax me from my fear, and shatter me again. So, I sit and watch the world go by, each sight seen without eyes, each sense felt with no touch. Scar tissue grows in me like climbing ivy. If I do not allow Him to intervene, soon it will wrap around the throat of my heart and choke me. I ask to live; I don’t want to fall asleep breathing toxins of indifference into my lungs.
God says to trust Him with all my heart. With all of its frailty, its hurt, the past that has stung and the future that has not yet touched me. Faith fixed on Him, imploring me to bare open in nakedness once more. I do not know how to live without detaching head from heart, how to stop myself and listen for the quiet beats, its voice stirred alive by the promise of who He is. How to gently stroke its sleeping form and whisper, Awake, my heart. Pull back the curtain on a new day that dawns with whatever He chooses to share with me, hand in His, steady breath, willing to bleed and break and build back up because He offers soothing balm.
I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this? —John 11:25-26 (NIV)
Let me listen. May I not forget my heart in the madness that is life. May I remember to let it lead the way, the route that finds its journey with the One whose precision is clean and accurate.
The wind stirs soft beneath my breast. To feel is to face the true grit of grace. Here, I plunge from the ledge, leap into the abyss. Hand over my heart, fall onto Him to carry every pound of my weight. I slip with no ground beneath me, pry the lock from my stone heart, and give permission to venture forth with feeling. To encounter it all, to be known by God in the marrow of this risk. It is a daring faith to let Him lead. But I am ready. I am willing. It is time. It is time long overdue.
Come awake, my heart. Speak your mind. Tell me what I dream to hear. Wander free. Raise in me a greater depth to share the ebb and flow of God’s pulse along my currents. Come awake so I may live, so I may live in full.
Sometimes it really does feel like torment to trust god.
IN WHAT WAYs are you learning to trust him again?
SARAH FREYMUTH writes at the intersection of beauty and the everyday while grappling with God’s goodness when life projects otherwise. She is a lover of the contemplative and creative, is a member of Redbud Writers Guild, and is a contributor for Proverbs 31 Ministries. Sarah writes for nonprofit organizations, is the editor of Awake Our Hearts, and enjoys her simple Midwest life in Wisconsin. Connect with her on sarahfreymuth.com and on Instagram at @sfreymuthawake.