I thought I would be something by the time I turned twenty-five.
Today, though, five weeks in, I don’t want to be comforted. I don’t want to be reassured and I don’t want to be gathered up and kissed and told I am good. I don’t want to be held. I don’t want soft words. I don’t want to be rescued, for maybe the first time in my life.
I am sitting in the rubble of the life I tried to build with my own strength and I see that I don’t even have a foundation to show for all of my striving. I am wholly spent but my hands are still empty. I have nothing to give. I have no one to speak for me. I am alone.
Do You really want me, such as I am?
Do You really want to be King of such a shabby and threadbare life?
All I have to offer You is me. I am twenty-five. I have already failed at school, at two different careers, at marriage. I am driven by fading passions and broken dreams. I am inconsistent and tempestuous and weak of will and the only altar I’ve ever maintained faithfully has been to the god dearest to my heart: fear.
And fear is a brutal master. The chains are heavy and the whip is cruel.
And I have still chosen him over You, over and over again.
So I will ask You again: do You really want this?
I am not the servant You deserve. I am not the noble warrior I have always envisioned myself becoming, and I honestly don’t know that I ever can be. I can’t even lift the sword. I am still reeling, completely off-balance, from years-old defeats. I am no lioness.
I am still just a small, dirty child grasping at everything that looks like love. My head is full of lies and my heart is full of storms and I have been content enough to live that way for at least the last decade. I had convinced myself that I needed everything except You.
Until now.
What kind of lover am I, to throw myself into Your arms only after I’ve failed to find hope and satisfaction everywhere else?
Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner.
I have absolutely nothing to offer except a broken heart and a long string of defeats. I want to know You and I want to submit wholly but I am still so afraid.
Lord, I believe.
Help my unbelief.
daughter of storms 