Yearning

I long to go out on my sunporch, sit in the sun and read.

It is too cold.

My throat swells thick with the longing to be out there under the gleaming windows, quiet, bright, comforted.

"There is no fear in love..." (from 1 John 4:18).  I've written about this before, but now that I said so, I can't find the old posts.  Anyway, I do not know what it means.  I love, and I fear.  I fear for those I love.

In Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Anne Tyler writes about a mother who has her first child and is frightened by how powerfully she loves him; terrified, in fact, at the realization of how vulnerable it has made her to the possibility of loss and pain.  So she has another child, thinking that if she has two, it wouldn't be quite so terrible to lose one.  But after the second baby arrives, she realizes that no, it works just the opposite: now she is in double jeopardy of losing.  This is what I call fear in love.

I had a moment this afternoon when I understood why parents sometimes disown their children.  It is not for lack of love.  It is because love hurts so very much when it meets resistance.  The act of disowning is a desperate attempt to shield a vulnerable heart from the intense pain of loss.  This does not mean that I am condoning it, only that I understand the root of it, and feel compassion.

Letting go is tricky business.  Sometimes it is right, good, necessary.  Other times it may be a defense mechanism, an attempt to flush away the devastation.

Thinking is a burden to the mind.  Striving is sometimes the right thing to do, and sometimes a complete waste.

It is in vain that you rise up early
    and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
    for He gives to His beloved sleep.
~Psalm 127:2 (ESV) 

To love is to put oneself at risk.  There is no other true love.

Someday spring will come and I will sit again on the sunporch and read my Bible with the light spilling blessedly over the pages.

In the meantime, I know that my inner yearnings join with the heart of God Himself, who longs to gather us under His wings even though we are always trying to get away.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.
~Matthew 23:37 (NIV)