Friends,
Gathered around our fire of love, we welcome you to come and listen...
It almost gave out.
And it's not the first time.
Our love story has been one of closeness and distance, depth and shallowness; feelings of great love and feelings of complete, rip-my-heart-out-right-now despair.
Abba, we look to you as our hearts remember...
remember earlier this week... that time when my face was blank and my heart was stone? The time that he wouldn't leave for fear that something had flown and we had lost...
By this time, we've experienced each other enough that we can hold to the poet's truth: no feeling is final, even when we feel like we're dying. We can get up the next day and keep moving and eventually our hearts will find their way back again and our minds will regain healthy thinking and we'll once again be in-love. We'll once again choose to love.
So here, around our warm love-flames, we want you to know that it's hard work. You might know this already, but I didn't have a clue. And honestly, no one knows until they feel it. Until they feel both the soaring glee of wantedness and the falling feeling of being forgotten.
And it's somewhere in the middle of this soaring and falling and slamming down and shattering and picking up, that we find ourselves. And we find each other. And we find a community of others.
I've watched Kip make fires many times, carefully placing the wood and the kindling, so specifically setting it up for a successful flame. The initial burst of heat and beauty is breathtaking, and doesn't seem to last long enough. With time, it settles. The wood breaks and falls away, and we must keep adding to it, keeping the flames bright and warm. But sometimes, either purposefully or not, the fire seems to falter and the coals grow dim. The flames are barely alive and look lifeless with their lack of strength. We grow cold in this stage... and sometimes the chilling lack of fire causes bitterness;
sometimes it's like I'm frozen right where I'm sitting and I'm staring into it, like I know what I could do to save it, but my position is one of passivity. I choose to ignore it. I choose to stay cold. I wrap things around myself to hide, to somehow get warm again without the fire. And in these moments, I fear.
And in these moments, I can either invite heavenly light or welcome a darkness that will surely overtake me.
The Light is the work.
The darkness is always there.
The flames of our love are purposed to draw others into their warmth, bringing them into our story - a love story built on authentic brokenness and healing woundedness. It's an ongoing story - one barely beginning with our initial meeting, and one that will continue on, always progressing, always challenging, always transforming.
As we move deeper into our story, as time passes, we'll continue to stoke the dying embers. We'll watch in amazement as what we thought were just ashes rise up and set fire again. And we'll learn to take better care of it. Of us.
As we grow, may we dream once again of a love so great, not mourning the lows, but standing back and watching the change and calling it good.
May we see His great love alive and active in our small campfire.
May we add to it, letting it crackle and pop as it will.
May we be so bold as to risk getting too close, able to see the dancing fire in each other's eyes.
And may we move together, even closer, diving straight into the all-consuming, wonderful flames of Love, letting it burn away at our once frozen-solid hearts.
& he set me on fire
I am burning alive
with his breath in my lungs
I am coming undone.
Love's taken over me
and so I propose:
letting myself go.
I am letting myself go.
You are my joy.
-David Crowder-
