Breathing Eden: Conversations With GodSample

In the Bright Place

Father, can I curl up next to you now? I lean against you. Will you hold me tight and let me stay here? I no longer have the answers that young girl had, yet I still want to believe I can make this marriage beautiful. I still want to believe I can live a story worth telling. I still want to believe I can paste pages of hope in an album my children will want to read. All because of you.

I am done chasing fairy tales. I am done faking this, done pretending everything is okay. I want your kind of real life. I want to choose love here—even if it is more work than I ever thought.

So give me wisdom, Jesus. Let me see the path. Set my feet upon it. Let me hear your voice: This is the way. Walk in it. I will receive your wisdom and stay here with you, your arms wrapped fast around me, never to let go.

I believe in you. I believe in light flooding dark places. I believe in change, hope, transformation.

I believe anything is possible with you.

MY DAUGHTER, I WILL STAY here with you. I will stay here as long as it takes. Holding you, drawing you in close to me, is what I love to do most. I’m not going anywhere. I love sitting here too, you know. I love having you close. I will stay here with you. I will never leave you, if you want me to stay.

I love to comfort you. I love to remind you how precious you are to me. I stay here, with you, listening to the rise and fall of our chests. It’s nice here, you know. You with me.

Real life here is better than anything you could dream up on your own. It is hard and beautiful, all in one. You weren’t naïve when you believed love would lead. You did not have an incorrect view of marriage, only an incomplete one. The romance you yearn for is a true desire. It is good. I’ve placed within you the desire to be wanted, seen, pursued. It’s how I’ve made you. The hard part is that love requires the dying to self.

Dying, you see, is never easy.

It is strange, I know, that love begins with death; but you know, as you look to my Son, that this is true.

Don’t give up on romance. Don’t give up on love leading. See that window there? It will not be night forever. See that hint of gold shining through? The sun can’t help but come in. You know this: you can’t close out light, child. You can ignore it. You can run. But it will shine all the same. You see it by knowing it’s there, even if you only feel darkness around you.

The light is large enough to cover everything, each sliver of darkness that wants to remain. No darkness stays dark. No problem stays the same when the light touches it. Darkness cannot stand against the light. It has never overcome it.

I stay here with you, watching light come in. I stay here with you, helping you desire light. I stay here with you, teaching you what light feels like on the skin, on the face, how it reaches every dark place—each corner of this room, each corner of your heart.

Tell me where you want the light to shine. Ask me how you can open to it. Take my light in you and raise it high. In my name, nothing can withstand it.

I have given you the light, and I hold you in it, and you are filled with it, and you are not the same as you were before. All who see you and hear you and stay with you are responding to my light in you.

That light, daughter, lets nothing stay the same.

Pray:

Father, so many of your daughters are struggling. They want more of you and ache for your light to shine—in their marriage and in their heart. I need you too, God. I can’t figure out how to live well without your guidance. I don’t have wisdom on my own. I can’t fix all my mistakes. Help me trust and seek you with my whole heart. I believe your light floods the dark places of my heart and life. You bring hope, love, and joy. Flood my heart and life with your light. When I feel disillusioned, help me know your never-changing truth. Help me seek you and see you. I surrender all of me to your light. I am yours. In Jesus’ name, Amen.