Until the Day Breaks

A new year commences, and with it comes the gift of a fresh start and a renewal of vows paid to the Lord in days and months and years past. Like a new dawn to a long night, a new beginning immerges, and something within me leaps with a new breath. Yes, it’s time to renew the sacred pledges, the holy chasings. This past year’s offering is one that I might not have chosen but am grateful for nonetheless. It is the gift of fresh awareness of my dependency, and more specifically, my spiritual dependency.  How dependent I am to keep this heart alive, to cause this heart to burn in deeper love. My weakness He has etched more deeply upon my soul this year – the rocky crags of my barren land. He’s caused my clinging to dig deeper into the Vine, desperate and dependent. I have seen how utterly and even bitterly weak I am – how I’ve nothing apart from Him. These are necessary knowings. For only in the clinging comes the fruit bearing and never by any other way.

And so carrying this year’s gift as deep etchings upon my soul, grateful and humbled, I lift my eyes to the rising glimmer upon the horizon of this new year. Love must win again this year. And Expectation, wide-eyed as a child, rushes ahead of me with candid liveliness, her eyes searching for the One in whom all hope is anchored. With questions of, “Will He come again and answer me?” and, “Will He meet this weakness with His beautiful strength?” marking her trail, she dares to press. With lucid and piercing eyes, she immerges from the fog of yesteryear, compelling all behind her to follow her fixed gaze.

It’s time to believe. It’s time to arise. It’s time to be stirred in the deep of me and let raw longings for the Holy One lift their voices with strength. For He, as Expectation’s wide-eyes remind me, fiercely attends to His desire to bring me forth victorious, blameless in love, and filled with the fruits of bright righteousness (Eph. 1:4; Phil. 1:11). Forgetting what is behind, that which I am not fit to measure, I press forward (Phil. 3: 13; 1 Cor. 4:3). With fresh remembrance of my raw weakness engraved vividly upon my soul, I arise. With sweet consolation found in the remembrance of His rich abundance and extravagance, I begin the race and the holy chase of 2012.

I dedicate this post to all the moms out there who find themselves day in and day out in the fires of monotonous moments with their children – moments with the potential for severe and sweet transformation and holy encounter… if embraced and yielded to…

I recently was struck with the truth that He is not looking for a better me but a lesser me.  He does not want better morality from me but greater dependency. I’m not to imitate the Vine but abide in it.

That’s a mouthful, admittedly, but it came not out of a culmination of lofty ideas but rather out of a deficiency of “good” within me as a mom.  It was one of those weeks, here at the final few days of this fourth pregnancy, when I found myself painfully lacking in godly responses to my other three children. Patience and peace and even joy had long drifted to a distant sea and I was left alone empty-handed in the sharp and cutting rawness of self. Just raw me, without the beautiful “goodness” that comes only from the Lord and springs forth only from the true Vine (Ps. 16:2; Jn. 15:5).

And there in my exposed state,  in the remorseful afterglow that follows the filth of wrongdoing,  I found myself repenting. Sincere reaching to the Lord out of my blaring weakness within and without.  It was in those moments as I lifted my heart to the Lord that I felt His reminder. He really isn’t after a better me but a lesser me. The One who spoke, “You can do nothing apart from Me” is not surprised when my “doings” are so  worthless. He is not asking for better outward works but greater inward reliance. He doesn’t want me polishing the doorknobs of my morality but rather cleaving desperately, with gut-level dependency,  to the only One who is Good.

I am to be the one who clings out of great need. HE is the One who transforms this deep abiding into the fruit marked by everlasting quality – fruit that remains (John 15:16). More of me and what I have to offer does no one a favor. But more of HIM? More of His life and goodness and peace and joy? Even tiny traces of such true life are the greatest gift I can offer my children, my husband and those near me. I’m not to imitate this Vine, but abide in it – in HIM.

Thus, when I begin to live separately from Him – even in moments or hours of time – when I leave that inward dependency that alone bears true fruit, my first and primary wrong done is not the rash word I speak or the sharp tone I use, but rather my initial parting from my only Source of life. The offense is first found in my independence and autonomy from Jesus. Yes, my words and actions are wrong but not because I’ve failed at perfecting my imitation of Him but because in my pride, I’ve separated myself  from the Source who alone brings forth the sweet fruit of godliness in me. My repentance to the Lord is not first or fundamentally a prayer of, “Forgive me for that word I spoke,” but rather, “Forgive me for separating myself from You, for assuming self-sufficiency.” My confession to my children is not first the sin of impatience but the sin of independence from the Patient One.

And so again, as we journey these most precious flames of parenting, of loving God and loving one another, let us remember that He is not looking for better morality from us but greater dependency  and faithful cleaving to Him – the kind of clinging to the Vine that alone bears true and lasting fruit. Our joy and aim is to at last give up the art of imitation and to truly partake of His impartation, His life and light abundant.

The more I grow in loving and knowing Jesus, the more I see how utterly dependent I am upon His upholding of my heart.  I cannot keep my own heart alive. Every point of progress and each forward movement is marked and undergirded by His tenacity over me – His zeal that I would be fully His. Many seasons, and this one included, I’m leaning into that tenacity. It’s one of those periods that little of my own strength arises to offer  itself and I am left painfully and accurately aware that it was never such additions of my own that keep my heart alive anyway. He causes me to remember in these days that He alone upholds my heart, opens my eyes, converts my soul, and furthers my growth in love. I am utterly reliant. A desperate willingness I bring. A refusal to live in less than His fullness, I renew. Yet in the end, He alone blows the fires of these embers and keeps alive the steady burning. And in these days, like many days in my history, I am leaning into the hope and assurance that that’s just exactly what He is doing and will do. I tremble beyond measure at the thought of future dullness, of subtle sinking into lethargy, of only memories about a heart alive in years past. But this fear has forgotten the backdrop of my every morning – how God has set the sun in the heavens to each day blaze forth like a bridegroom from his chamber, every morning rejoicing as a strong man to run his race (Ps. 19:4,5).  Each dawn a telling and a portrait of God Himself in all of His strength and zeal and ardor, rejoicing in the circuit of love’s race, energy everlasting and vigor always young. He never tires of bringing forth love in the human heart – never. He takes a weak ‘yes’ and untiringly cultivates it into the perfect maturity of finest gold.  He takes the hunger of a needy soul and ushers it to completion. He takes the open space of a listening heart and plants His Word, as sweet as honey, never to be taken from its possession (Lk. 10:42). My love for Him, my burning heart, was always His gift, always His initiative, always His awakening, always His sustaining power.

Thus, today I fix my eyes on this jealous part of His nature and bring my soul into the rest that comes in beholding His unrelenting tenacity. Even in the in-between days, the months of seeming silence and distance, when my heart pants for Him and yet I cannot feel His nearness, even then He does not withdraw His gaze or His absolute involvement in my movement forward.  He is piercingly near even when I have no present discernment of His proximity. Surely, His jealousy keeps me. His tenacious love oversees all my days and undergirds all my nights. And it will be Him, each step of the journey to bring that steady burn into fullest blaze…til that blessed Perfect Day (Prov. 4:18; Phil. 1:6).