The Hidden Heart

Well, I've finished my first semester at the Institute for Spiritual Formation. I have such a mixture of feelings. On one hand there is the relief from the work involved with school, but on the other hand, there is sadness because I really enjoy my classes and my classmates. Some of them have become very dear to me already. During my last final on Monday, I had the opportunity to write for 2 1/2 hours about how this semester has impacted me. I have decided that I will post some of those thoughts in an attempt to share more of my, and sometime our, movement into the deeper life:

God has been actively working in us through the trials we have faced over the last year and even the circumstances we have been dealing with over the last several months. Our situation of unemployment since being here has done wonders for stirring up my hidden heart. The desire to control the situation and hurry up and move through it was extremely powerful in me. Since I had spent my whole life living in the power of my self (often in the name of the Holy Spirit), my mind was going crazy trying to figure out ways to fix the situation including how to manipulate Brandon to that end.

Fear and anxiety ruled me, but then we began to discuss the nature of the heart in my classes. It’s fallen, self-deceiving, layered ad infinitem, immense, and there is no amount of fortitude in the world that can fix it. Dr. Coe said we had to despair of fixing ourselves that our first move should be opening to God. That was a paradigm shift to be sure, one that is still in process. But as I began to take in the material and internalize it, it resonated within me. The Holy Spirit is always working in me and my job is to simply open to what He is doing. I began to pay more attention to what was bubbling up in my heart with regard to our circumstance and I began dialoguing with Brandon about it and he too joined me in the process.

As we began to share the hell boiling up in our souls with each other, I noticed the fingers that I was clenching onto Brandon with began to relax. The Lord began to show us how He was taking us on another path than what we had laid out for ourselves. Though it was more painful, it lacked nothing in terms of the Lord’s care and concern for us. Had Brandon landed a great job right away, it would have only served to confirm our beliefs in the sufficiency of the flesh and the power of our autonomy. Instead, the Lord cracked our hearts wide open and we had to get honest with ourselves. I came face to face with my need to control and to provide for myself and the underlying mistrust I was harboring against my husband and the Lord. And even as I was up to my eyeballs in this mess and expecting all the condemnation that hell could muster, the Lord treated me so kindly. He looked at me with such compassion and love. It is a wondrous thing to experience yourself as loved by God even when you're bad.

dez