This weekend when a co-worker went on vacation for the 4th of July, I picked up three overnight shifts. The problem with this was that on my 13th birthday my brain self-imposed a 10:30pm bedtime and I’ve turned into an intellectual pumpkin promptly at 10:31pm every night since. Since this circadian rhythm has been set from middle school, my weekend has been spent in “the crazy-making cycle:” go to work, fight to stay awake all night, come home exhausted, sleep all day, go to work…
It’s 3:01 am on July 5th. I’ve stayed 3 nights in succession.
Needless to say my brain is now completely numb.
Why do I inflict these overnights on myself you ask--- since I have such a “sleeping-at-night” rut? Two reasons:
1. My job is about being there for someone when she needs me. I care about the all women I work with, so I do usually agree to work--- unless for some reason I really can’t.
2. Tim and I are still poor enough to be grateful for the work despite the unfortunate side effects—cabin fever and communication skills on par with a zombie.
On the 4th of July I got home at 9:15am and slept till 1:07pm. I woke up with a severe case of Need-Tim-near-itus [since my husband I are on completely opposite schedules this weekend] and cabin fever. Thus after lunch I insisted that we go on a walk regardless of the fact that it was raining cats and dogs. Armed for the weather in Tim’s XL hooded jackets we set out down main street, McPherson hand in hand. In five minutes we were drenched--- embarrassingly so. Clothes clung to skin and sagged with the weight of the water.
Water-weight pulled the long sleeves of my husband’s jacket over my fingertips and the rain soaked hood all but swallowed up my face. I looked like a kid, playing dress-ups in grown-up clothes. I began to feel small. I started to worry that someone we knew might see us and think that our frolic in the rain was foolish and immature.
My fingers stretched beyond the fabric of too-long-for-me sleeves, and pressed into the warm hollow of my husband’s palm for reassurance. We walked this way in silence for a long time--- me too tired to sustain my normal chatter, and Tim deep in thought about how much he enjoys holding my hand [touch is definitely his love language—its electricity consumes his mental energies.]
After a while of holding my husband’s hand, what people might think stopped mattering. At the same time we both started laughing. We sloshed right through every puddle, since we were soaked to the core anyway. We smiled at each other and drank in the rain. We enjoyed the loneliness of the outdoors. For twenty minutes more--- we owned McPherson. We kept the sidewalk all to over selves, and kept on repeating to each other over and over- “I have missed you this weekend. Oh how I love you.”
It didn’t matter that onlookers might find our frolic gratuitously affectionate because our hearts knew this moment was ours. In the crazy-work weekend God had sandwiched a sliver of time to reveal to us the ways He is at work in our marriage, and we were going to savor every minute He gave.
Towards the end of the walk I turned to Tim, happiness swelling in my heart, and announced, “ Rain feels like God forgiving the whole earth. Washing. Nourishing. Bringing forth life…” Then I looked to the cloud-filled sky and whispered under my breath, “May you do it in me too Father—make everything new.”
As I sent up this prayer, a snapshot of a conversation Nic, Liz, Tim, and I had on the way home from Revolution flashed into my mind. I was trying to share with Nic and Liz, our couple friends, the difference between my concept of love before getting married and now:
Before I got married, no matter what I said, I really believed that love has to be earned. Tim’s sticking with me on my black days blows the top off my concept of love. He doesn’t want me to hide my real feelings and struggles; He enters them with me. Finally the Jesus I have followed since I was little girl has skin on… and it’s like my heart can begin to fathom Him loving me broken for the first time.
Even as I spoke I felt my explanation seemed gushy and wasn’t capturing the power of the transformation that God was working in marriage. My friends—who are also married and very much in love--- just smiled at my rambling, and I thought they might understand what I meant anyway. Even if they didn’t I knew Tim did and enjoyed the transparency.
I realized from the beginning that transparency [and the transformation it brings] was the pathway connecting that car-ride conversation and our walk in the rain in my thoughts.
And in them both God was teaching me how true it is that the knowledge that one is deeply loved makes the opinions of culture, and even our opinions of ourselves stop mattering. This is mystery to me, I can’t word it, but I feel deep in the core of me. God and Tim both like me a whole lot more than I like myself… and a part of my liking them back is choosing to believe them about myself.
This Sunday night as I returned to work God reinforced this concept with a verbal picture that captures way Love transforms exactly. I had been catching up on reading Brennan Manning’s Abba’s Child to fill the lonely hours of my overnight shift. As I read this portion Manning’s words cut into me, touched a wound, gave me goose bumps of hope:
“God who spoke us into existence, speaks to us now: “Come out of self-hatred into my love. Come to me now,” he says. “Forget about yourself. Accept who I long to be for you, who I am for you--- Your Rescuer--- endlessly loving, forever patient, unbearably forgiving. Stop projecting your sick feelings onto me. You are a broken flower--- I will not crush you---- a flickering candle---- I will not extinguish you. For once and forever, relax: of all places, you are safe with me.”
My heart knows it’s true. Not because people won’t be made uncomfortable by my embrace of the expansive love of God, but because His love is all sufficient. He walks with me in rainstorms. He lives with me and likes me.
I am loved and liked by my Creator. Nothing else matters.
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