and now I see ...

It's been a long time
but I still remember what it was like to hate Him.
It didn't start out that way, me hating him. And I am not sure when it happened. What I do recall is when someone asked me to go see him, hang out, and be a part of what he was doing, my insides began to burn and my fists would clench.

All I knew about Him flashed in front of me, which admittedly, wasn't much. But it was enough. Enough to make me rage. Enough to make me say NO.
I remember saying ... "After all that has happened? After everything I have gone through? No. I'm not interested in any Jesus. I don't need a savior. AND I will never, ever worship (practically spitting the word out of my mouth) any God that walked around as a man."

You see, men made me want to want to step inside a scalding shower and scrub all my flesh off until I disappeared. Specifically, middle-aged, white, religious men, with poochy bellies, short statures, and glasses that doubled the number of eyes that stared at me with lust and hunger. Men that said "Jesus!" and "I am SAVED! I am FORGIVEN!" and "Gawd bless YOU!" and then took me upstairs for "naps". Men that made me do things I did not want to do and then told me I better ask for forgiveness later because I had been a bad girl, a naughty disgusting girl. Men that whispered to me in the dark and covered my head with pillows when I begged and cried.

Men. Man.

No thanks. I'm out.

I was told over and over by his daughters and my mother, that he had been forgiven. Jesus (Jesus!) had cleansed his heart and his life and the thing in his pants (he has been SAVED Shannon! Saved!)
and now I must forgive him too. (this is what good Christians do Shannon, this is what they do!)

I remember thinking to myself, "I don't want to be a good Christian. I don't want to be any Christian at all."

It took a long time before I understood how people can twist even a good God like Jesus into something mangled and different so they can feel better.

People can twist him up so much, he's not recognizable anymore.

I remember the day I sat in the church and felt Jesus next to me. I knew it was Him. I knew, because I wasn't looking for Him and I didn't want Him to be there. I was there to listen and then leave. I didn't expect anything other than what I had seen my whole life - empty words that weren't real.
And so when He was, it was so obviously plain to me. There was night. And now there was day.

I was almost offended by it.

I didn't want Him to be real. I didn't want to reconcile anything in my head or in my heart. I knew what the twisted Jesus looked like. It was safer to hold on to Him that way.

But I couldn't.

Because what was next to me wasn't twisted at all. The full force of His LOVE radiated on to me. It was warm. And gentle.
And it ... waited.
It waited for me to say "ok". It waited for me to say, "Yes, I will let you be with me".

Isn't it funny, in an incredibly heartbreaking non-funny way, we can become so used to the wrongness of life that any rightness that tries to introduce itself is threatening and shown the door? Don't let it hit you so hard you fall on your face and crack it open on the way out.
Or do.
It's all the same to me.

But this day, I did not show Him the door as I had so many times before. I couldn't. I felt a craving start to gnaw inside me, a fierce need I didn't even know I had.
My love-starved soul woke up. And it demanded to be fed. It had gone without nourishment for far far too long.
All I could do was sit in it.
and cry.

I could hear him, hear him (!) whispering to me, and not like the whispers before, not ones that made me afraid and want to curl into the tiniest of balls and hide....
No.
These were smatterings of love. Gentler than a moth's wings. Quieter than tall grass waving in the wind.

"It's ok", He said. "I love you."

I love you. I love you. i love you. i love you.

i love you. i love you.

i love you. i love you.
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you youyouyouyouyouyouyouyouyouyouyouyouyou

iloveyou.

I got up. I walked with shaky legs and a shakier heart to the front ... wanting so badly to throw myself down at the feet of Him. To crawl into his lap and have Him hold me and rock me and tell me again how much He loved me, like a mother would do for her child. Or a father.

I knelt and I put my face in my hands and my soul ripped open. I couldn't stop the tears if I tried. My insides, my body, my spirit knew better than my head what I needed
and i needed to let go.
to be free.
to empty myself of all the junk and the black and the rotten that had taken residence inside me.

A good soul scrubbing.
A renewal.
A gift.

Now it is Easter. It is Saturday. The day after he would have been beaten and tortured and ripped up and nailed; left bleeding and naked and exposed.
And for what? Because He loved. Because He healed. Because He took away all the junk and the black and the rotten.

Because He is God.

I imagine how his followers felt on that Saturday.
Lost. Disappointed. Confused. Afraid. Bereft.

They didn't understand what was happening. They didn't realize what it meant. They thought all hope was lost. They thought it was dead. They thought they were on their own.

They didn't know
that on Sunday
Hope would rise ....

and they would never be alone again.

I
will never be alone
again.
And all the junk,
and the black,
and the rotten

is now white in Love.