The Valley of Love

"It is for discipline the you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons." Hebrews 13:7-8 (ESV)

"From the place of our woundedness we construct a false self. We find a few gifts that work for us, and we try to live off of them . . . I became a hard-charging perfectionist; there, in my perfectionism, I found safety and recognition . . . So God must take it all away . . . He must shatter the false self." (John Eldredge, Wild at Heart, p107)

As I write this, I am filled with joy. But the last two months have been a valley, one of the greatest valleys of my life. And from the depths of my soul, I thank and praise God for it.

I hear so much of myself in what Eldredge says. All my life, perfection has driven me. Deep down inside, a message has dwelled - a lie from the pit of hell. The lie is the same one heard by men and women around the world as the deceiver does his best to blind us:

You're not good enough to deserve love from anyone.

I am indebted to Eldredge for setting this out so well (Wild at Heart means a great deal to me). The result of the lie is we each find ways of hiding - of trying to convince ourselves that we are in fact worthy of love. In my case, I was blessed by God with scholastic ability and musical talent. As a young boy, these things defined me. I wanted to be the prodigy. Sometimes someone would even tell me that I was. But perfection was always there. Every time I fell short of that 'perfection' - a measurement which was generally arbitrary, ridiculous, and existed only in my mind - I felt like a failure. Over the years, I added measurements other than school and music to the list - social popularity, appearance, women, even spiritual gifts all became part of the 'image' I had to have. In the end, I aspired to be James Bond, except that I would marry the gorgeous girl and lead Bible Studies instead of sleeping around and shooting up terrorists. It's like carrying around a mountain - but once the first lie causes us to hide behind an image, the second lie follows swiftly after:

People (including God!) love your image, not you. If they knew you, their love would cease.

And so we lumber on. As Eldredge and so many others have told us, it's all a scam to keep us from the one thing that can save us - the love of God.

For two months, God has chipped away at my mountain. He could have torn it down much more than He did. My health, my advancement in my job, my relationship with AL, all became uncertain. All of a sudden, the stuff I had called "faith" was revealed for what it really was: the intellectual calculation that I would most likely get what I wanted, or at least something I could deal with. This sort of thinking is straight from the devil - offering us just enough false comfort to trick us into carrying the mountain a bit further. Over a period of weeks, I went from healthy, in a relationship with a beautiful girl, and moving ahead at work - a picture of the things a successful young man should be - to physically sick, emotionally wrecked, uncertain about my career, and alone - alone by MY hand, not hers, I might add. Now the mountain was just too heavy, and my arms were breaking. Instead of propping up my image, my intellect now turned on it. I would quite possibly NOT get what I wanted, my 'image' really WOULD suffer, and certainty of any sort of comfort was straight out the window. Into that, a voice could quietly be heard. . .

"You are my son, and I love you. Trust me!"

Did I really hear that? Was it God's voice? Well, yes I think it was. Whether He spoke audibly in my mind or brought the His Word out from my memory (cf. Rom 8:28, John 1:12) isn't really an important distinction to me. In the end, God in His mercy placed a core within me, a core that cannot be shaken or taken away. And in the valley, I saw it. God is the ONLY object of our love which can never be taken from us, because He Himself is eternal, and guarantees our love through His grace and mercy. In a way I had never known before in my life, I knew I belonged to Him. I don't mean to say that I had some epiphany and then felt great. Not at all. With a nod to Robert Jordan for the expression, this was neither the beginning nor the end . . . because God's grace has neither. But it was a beginning. And so I put the mountain down, and the light yoke, the easy burden sat before me. Just as it sits in front of all of us.

I have written all of this in order that I may plead with anyone who reads it - put down your mountain! Whatever image you're living for, drop it! Let it go! If you are in Christ, then God loves you as His child and will gladly remove it from your shoulders. For me, pain was the method. I had to lose many things, including perhaps the greatest gift God has given me in this world, the love of the greatest, most God-honoring woman I have ever known, in order to finally see myself as I was. I don't want to overstate the case - my sufferings are miniscule compared to what so many have gone through. But for me it felt like a searing fire. It is my prayer that someone may read this and hear Him speaking to them (for His glory, not mine). Lose an image-loving life that will kill you and save the life that Christ will joyfully give.

Father,
I am not good enough, and I never will be. But your Son is, and in His arms I want to rest. Take all of my burdens from me, by any means necessary, that Your name may be glorified in the life that comes only from you. Amen.