Regardless, I have this thing where I always believe that if a child of God cannot sleep after she asks Him for it, that there is a REASON that she's awake (especially when it's been 7 hours after coffee!). A few people have mentioned lately that I haven't posted for a while... so I've been thinking and waiting for inspiration to strike. And it just hit me on the head... or something.
About a year ago I was sitting in bed writing to you, wondering where my life could possibly lead from here, feeling hopeful, but hardly seeing good in all the struggles that strangled the life out of me daily. I wondered how I would ever get out of the mess that I had buried myself in, and had no idea how I would get dig myself back out.
It was in the middle of that mess that Zach found me. Dirty. Broken. Unclean. Imperfect.
I remember one day after we had been talking for a couple months, I mentioned something about how I was dirty on the inside and not actually worth much at all, and he looked at me with a godly fire in his eyes that I had hardly seen before, and told me how very wrong I was. A few weeks later I was driving home from church after having tea with him, and the song "Perfect" by Pink came on the radio. Tears flowed from my eyes like the rising of spring waters. Something so wonderful and new and beautiful whelmed up inside of me. It was as if God was using a stranger's very voice to tell me that I was loved, cherished, renewed, upheld, strengthened, forgiven, and that I belonged to him. That was exactly what Zach was telling me. And that's exactly the message that God had for me. I was not farther away than His grace could reach. I was not too deep that His love could not rescue me. I was His regardless of how I felt. Worthy or sinful, discouraged or uplifted, loved or hated, far or near. I could not escape His love's hold on me.
This was the message that He began to speak to me through Zach, little by little. When I met him, I was so far from having my life together. So far from being the kind of woman I always had thought a wife should be. But the more Zach knew me the more he loved me. The harder I pushed him away, the more persistently he encouraged me to drop my hands, and let him be there in my struggle with me. The more insecure I felt, the stronger his desire became to point me to Christ and remind me that all my fountains are in Him.
And Zach was showing me Christ all along.
HE found me when I was broken. HE loved me despite my missing pieces. HE sat in my struggles with me. HE pointed me to Christ over and over again.
He never let me go.
He never will.
"25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church."
Ephesians 5
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