There are books we read once.
And then there are books we come back to years later...
only to find out we are not the same person reading them.
I have been rereading Wild at Heart by John Eldredge.
It is a book written about the masculine heart.
But this time through, I kept finding myself in its pages.
Maybe not the way the author intended.
Maybe exactly the way I needed.
Three words stopped me.
They were describing God.
Wild.
Dangerous.
Unfettered and free.
I sat with those words for a long time.
Because somewhere along the way, a lot of us were handed a much safer version of God.
And a much smaller version of ourselves.
Be good.
Be agreeable.
Keep everybody comfortable.
Don't make too much noise.
Don't want too much.
Don't risk too much.
And when you are somebody who loves people deeply, it gets very easy to confuse loving someone with slowly disappearing for them.
I know something about that.
I know what it is to adjust.
To accommodate.
To disappear a little at a time in the name of love.
Not because anybody asked me to.
Because somewhere along the way I learned that keeping the peace felt safer than listening to my own heart.
But God did not create me to disappear.
That one line has changed the way I think about love.
While I was reading, a prayer came.
God, teach me to love the woman You created so completely that when I love someone else, I never have to leave her behind again.
That might be one of the most important prayers I have prayed in this season of my life.
Because I do want to love again.
Deeply.
Generously.
Courageously.
I don't want independence to become a wall around my heart.
I don't want old hurt to talk me into believing that needing no one is the same thing as being strong.
But I don't want a love that asks me to abandon myself either.
I want the kind where two whole people stand beside each other.
Room for adventure and quiet.
For strength and tenderness.
For faith and questions.
For togetherness and freedom.
Maybe that is what authentic masculinity and authentic femininity were always supposed to look like.
Not competing with one another.
Not controlling one another.
Not completing one another.
Calling each other more fully into who God created us to be.
Another passage talked about heading into the high country of the soul.
Into the wild and uncharted places.
To go looking for something that has been hard to find.
I love that picture.
Because sometimes finding yourself again means going somewhere unfamiliar.
You have to ask questions you have not asked before.
Who am I when I am not somebody's wife?
Who am I when my children don't need me the same way?
Who am I when the house gets quiet?
What do I love?
What makes me come alive?
What did God put inside of me before I learned to edit myself for everybody else?
Those feel like wild and uncharted regions.
I think I have been walking through some of them.
And I am finding something beautiful out there.
The woman waiting for me is not a brand new woman.
She is familiar.
She is the girl who loved music.
The woman who loves people.
The dreamer.
The adventurer.
The woman who can sit at a crowded table and love everybody around it.
And who is learning she can sit alone in a quiet house and still be completely at home.
She was never gone.
I had simply stopped listening for her.
Maybe that is what freedom looks like in this chapter.
Not running away.
Not proving anything.
Not refusing to need anyone.
Just becoming unfettered enough to follow God into the places He is calling me...
even when I don't have a map.
And someday, if somebody walks beside me there, I hope I love him fiercely.
I hope I cheer for the man God created him to be.
I hope I never try to tame anything wild and beautiful in him just because it would make me feel safer.
And I hope he does the same for me.
But this time there will be one more heart at that table that I have promised not to abandon.
Mine.
So maybe my prayer is not simply that God brings the right people into my life.
Maybe it is this.
Father,
Keep teaching me who You created me to be.
Let me love people without losing myself in them.
Let me be tender without giving myself away.
Let me have boundaries without building walls.
Give me the courage to travel into the wild and uncharted places of my own soul.
And teach me to live the life You gave me...
unfettered and free.
Amen.
With light and love,
Kristi J
Welcome Home
Pull Up a Chair
Some questions to sit with this week.
- What did you come back to years later, only to find out you were a different person reading it?
- Who is the woman waiting for you in the uncharted places, and when did you stop listening for her?
- What would change about the way you love people if you promised, starting today, not to leave your own heart behind in it?