One of the sweetest things I’ve gotten to hear said to me, has been this.
“Still here, not going anywhere.”
I had thought, growing up, that just because I had come into this earth knowing the expiration date for my family as I had come to know them, suspecting dad’s leaving since before I was seven… feeling it nearing, I had thought everything else in life would be just the same.
I learnt how to say goodbye like the sun every evening, knowing myself turning into night more and more, after every single one.
Everything was finite, so much so, that I couldn’t even begin to measure anything before it was over and done, taken from me or thrown by my own hands before anyone took it… as if somehow, if it was me the one leaving it would hurt less.
It never did.
“I hear,” He told me one night about a fortnight ago.
My singing coming up to His Holy Temple is what He let me hear on a May the 22nd, about a year ago. I was in deep pain, that day. My life, finite.
He made it new.
His light, I’ve seen it many times ever since.
“You’re healed,” I’ve heard His whispers these last months.
Aderezas mesa delante de mí, en presencia de mis angustiadores…
“You set a table before me in the presence of my enemies,” something from Him sings within me before certain meals, when I am quiet and calm… receptive instead of despairing.
Do you know how letting go truly feels?
When it’s because of fear, it shatters you.
When it’s because He asks, the surrender… it empties you as it comes. It’s not pretty, quite the opposite. But His welcoming one into His arms… when it’s Him and Him only the one you look for, knowing in your heart that without Him nothing else would do, then eventually the lights come up again and everything turns out to have been worth it.
He knows we hurt. He knows our anger… and loves us so much He lets those fade so we never know His wrath (I have certainly seen it). He knows our hearts when everything we want is something from Him but not His self, He knows when we uncover our truths, like when I told Him “The thing is, if I had everything I want right now, but no You, I’d never smile… ever again.” and uncovered my truth. He has made sure I learn how to smile with it only being me and Him.
“I don’t want to leave my family, not anymore,” I told Him this morning, “could You let me stay here? I’d work hard from where I am, not far from them, If You’d want me to… It is only You who can open and close every door… and it’s here where You placed me. I love it here, I do, now.”
It’s not like I wouldn’t move anywhere if He wanted me to, but my leaving and running away has been an issue growing up and we both know it. My answering I’m not leaving, that I’d rather stay, shakes something up in the heavens and here on earth. I grew up turning into a flight risk, I mastered the leaving by twenty-five and was ready for my final goodbye, leaving home one day and never coming back.
It was never just Him and me, not even after He let earthly dad go and took me into His own care… my sisters, my mom… and the rest of the new members now… and He didn’t let me miss any of it even when it was everything I could’ve wanted. Missing it. Hurting. Leaving.
He made a family from nothing, believe me when I say we were worse than ashes. He… kindled us into His desire, and still does.
That’s a new sentence for me to whisper as if it was an eternal litany, all but tedious, “Still here, not going anywhere,” as I learn love is many things, but not finite. Never finite.
Not true love, who carries a Name.
And it’s His life and desire I’m in now; the very One Author of faith teaching me how to live.
Last Thursday I felt the emptiness, but by Saturday morning, He had come.
Still here, not going anywhere.
-SFTS
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