​86. Behind Bone and Flesh

I’m having a hard week.

Jesus is working His way through all my cards, and it’s so obvious I’ve been bluffing.

When I write, I write to me more than anyone else. I write to the black human hole eating through my heart. I write to the past I won’t turn back to and the memory that raises bumps in my skin.

And to the future me I know He’s making.

I have a whole room in my mind where I criticize and judge and live out an existential crisis that forgets Christ’s mercy and grace to me.

And maybe that’s the warped circular pattern in need of reframing. If I can just realize His mercy and love for me, maybe I can extend the same to others.

I research things like “is love an action?” because if that’s the only thing it is, a decision to do, then I can handle that. It becomes another thing I can check off my list.

But if love is something more, a thing driven out of the beating of my own heart, I dare say I’m in trouble.

I pray every day for an authentic sort of love for others.

For the strangers nursing their own darkness behind bone and flesh.