Choices

I hate how hard choices are, especially when you know what the right one is, and you really don't want to choose it.

I have spent a lot of time examining my heart lately. Wondering at my motives, and the patterns that are set, proding me in one direction or another. Patterns that change view, like looking at truth through a colidescope. It's all jumbled, upside down, cut into pieces, and staring at it for too long gives you a headache. Where do the pieces fit? What is why and why is who and who is how.

Scripture gives to many good examples of walking out of woundedness. In Hosea, God talks to him about his wife. 7"She will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them; and she will seek them, but will not find them then she will say, 'I will go back to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now!' 8"For she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the new wine and the oil, and lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal."

For a woman sold into slavery by her father, she knew nothing else. The kindness of a husband who loved her could not touch the her heart, it was solid. Every time Hosea must have touched her, it must have been every other man, and every time he spoke to her, in her sight, it must have been the mouths of people who had told her she was nothing but what could satisfy. So she ran. She ran back to what she knew. She ran back to what she knew how to handle, to what she could control. She sold herself for what she knew she could gain, grain, and vineyards, and fabric, and everything else she needed. This was hers, this was the world she understood, the way it worked, this made sense. This is how she received her love. You can hear her cry "Don't you understand? This is all there is. Nothing more! Don't mock me by trying to convince me of something else. What, so you married me? You will tire of me the way the others did. I will anger you, and you will take away your love. I have hoped for love before, and lost. Don't ask me to again. Not when I know it is impossible. This is all I am meant for. Leave me here." So she ran. She ran away from hope, from the unknown, from comfort that had to be temporary. From a love that caressed her for a moment leaving her breathless, but knowing, would never last.

9"Therefore, I will take back My grain at harvest time and My new wine in its season. I will also take away my wool and my flax given to cover her nakedness. 10"And then I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one will rescue her out of My hand. 11"I will also put an end to all her gaiety, her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths and all her festal assemblies. 12"I will destroy her vines and fig trees, of which she said, 'These are my wages which my lovers have given me ' and I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field will devour them. 13"I will punish her for the days of the Baals when she used to offer sacrifices to them and adorn herself with her earrings and jewelry, and follow her lovers, so that she forgot Me," declares the LORD.

So He took it away. All she thought she knew, what she could control, all that she put her hope in, it turned to dust. She ran back, back to nothing. It was even more empty than before. She looked out over what she had, and now was lost, and must have raged. "Why!!??" You can hear her scream. "Can I have nothing?! Is there anything left for me? Can I not even have what is deserved?! Am I cursed? Am I the penance for the land?!" I can see her on her knees, clothes torn, holding the dry sand from a once fertile soil, tears streaming down her face, staring into the sky screaming. "Will you leave me nothing?" Broken her head falls. "What am I to You? Where have You been?" You can hear the silence thick and heavy. She falls, hugging her knees. "You win. I'll go back. To what I don't know, but I'll go back. He must hate me now anyways. At least if you does he won't ask me for my heart. I don't even know how to give that."

Dejected she walks home.

14"Therefore, behold, I will allure her, I will bring her into the wilderness and speak kindly to her. 15"Then I will give her her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor as a door of hope and she will sing there as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt. 16"It will come about in that day," declares the LORD, "That you will call Me Ishi (husband) and will no longer call Me Baali (master). 17"For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, so that they will be mentioned by their names no more. 18"In that day I will also make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds of the sky and the creeping things of the ground and I will abolish the bow, the sword and war from the land, and will make them lie down in safety. 19"I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, In loving kindness and in compassion, 20and I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. Then you will know the LORD. 21"It will come about in that day that I will respond," declares the LORD. "I will respond to the heavens, and they will respond to the earth, 22and the earth will respond to the grain, to the new wine and to the oil, and they will respond to Jezreel. 23"I will sow her for Myself in the land I will also have compassion on her who had not obtained compassion, and I will say to those who were not My people, 'You are My people!' and they will say, 'You are my God!'"

When He promised her these things, I wonder if she believed Him? I don't know the ending, no one does. It's the greatest romantic cliffhanger the world has ever seen. Does she let Him, and subsequently, her husband, into her heart? Does she ever heal?

I guess for me, I have to believe she does. I have to believe that during the moments of her life, her life would stop, and for a moment, tunnel vision would overwhelm as He stopped her and caressed her face saying "Perfect one, my dove, my wife, my life: my everything is yours." I have to trust that in those moments she knew, she was his heartbeat, and that knowledge helped her see her Hosea differently. In my heart of hearts, I see her, belly on her hand, her other child playing with her husband, and tears silently coarsing down her face as the love she feels grips her heart like a vice. I have to believe it was all returned, and made not only right, but she knew it was not from her hands, but the hands of her true Husband, the real giver of every good and perfect gift.

You see, I am her, that's why I have to believe. I don't know where I am in the story, but I do know this, I am her. I feel and see and know her. I have been betrothed to my real Husband, and run, chasing after what I thought I wanted. Fearing a broken heart again, I have my heart has run. It closes involuntarily as I struggle with trusting when betrayal and rejection are more known than love. As I don't know how her story ends, neither do I see the end of mine yet. I stare down the road, heart beating, knowing I can't turn around, but fearing what lies on the other side. He has said He will always respond, as He told her, but I fear, as I believe she did, another broken heart. I have to believe though, that He is present. I need to believe He is, and whether or not I like it, the hope is there. With all of the crushing I have tried to do, it is there, and I can't deny it, so I will believe. I will wait for Him to speak kindly too me.