Protect me, Lord, My God.
Hedgehogs have quills, Turtles have shells. The person who doesn’t know love has harsh words, and I only have my tears, which do nothing to protect me.
There are no words for me to speak when the air is full of hateful words that are shaped like arrows. There is NO SPACE for me to fit my words in between the arrows that slice my words into bits, so I write.
I feel the words that might make them understand how I feel, but they sit hard in my throat. The words, unspoken, just about gag me, but I keep my lips closed tight and refuse to release them into the battle zone with no armor to protect them.
My tears ignore the plan in my mind to wait for the danger to pass and they come out to show themselves to the enemy no matter how hard I try to hold them back. My tears refuse to be hidden away.
My little tears are too naive to know that they just make my accuser angry, because hearts sometimes miss a vital portion of understanding the love of Jesus, which is the force behind the existence of compassion. When love is in someone’s heart, another person’s tears stir up that compassion, a softness and a kindness in them, and they feel empathy. But that doesn’t matter now, because it doesn’t exist in the heart attached to the lips that attack me.
Tears flow from my broken heart whether I want them to or not. I made a wrong turn and chose physical attraction and my hope in a potential heart change, but I took my vows seriously regardless of the struggles.
I thought that God ruled humanity with laws and commandments, but didn’t realize that greater than that, God created and views humanity from a place of love from beginning to end. I didn’t understand that the only love that I had ever known in my lifetime was very different than that, because this “love” had been used against me as a bargaining chip and as a way to keep me in line.
It was my choice to toss the key to my locked cage of marriage far away, though, all to honor my dedication and commitment to my vows, “for better or for worse.” I was a fighter. I was resilient. I was certain that the whole world would reject me, judge me, and abandon me… because divorce is hateful and wrong. But what of being killed slowly in a cage of our own creation, was that more hateful and wrong than divorce?
I would have NOTHING if I walked away from my investment in THIS. But what even WAS THIS that I thought was love?
Daily battles, numbing out, running away, objects thrown, doors slammed, flowing tears, angry words, horrible names that scarred my heart, and neither of us ever knowing how to meet each other in the middle. No boundaries, no respect, no understanding of love, and no hope that anything would change.
It killed me. Slowly but surely, my marriage killed me. I DIED as the person that I had become, as the person that I didn’t even know anymore. My spirit gave up, I had nothing more to give, and I chose death over another day of hopelessness, hate, and a hurting heart.
BUT GOD…. he sent his son, Jesus, who had overcome death, and I knew that. But why would God EVER want me? All that was left of me was a broken heart in a soupy puddle of tears, with no hope that anything could or should ever be different for me, because I had made my choice to marry a broken human with a heart that had refused to surrender or to accept God’s love.
I was a broken human, too. I still AM a broken human, because we all are. But now I have fully surrendered, and I have learned to accept that God loves me even though I have done nothing to deserve it. I’M ALIVE, and I have more life and love in me and surrounding me than I could have ever imagined, only because I chose to admit that I was SO BROKEN that I needed Jesus to care for my wounds and redeem my sins.
Suddenly I realized why my little tears continue to insist on revealing their hiding place no matter how big or small the battle. Holy Spirit tells me that it’s because they aren’t soldiers on a battle field, THEY ARE MEDICS! Their job is to heal me from the inside out, but I had tried to hold them back to protect them, because they were getting shot at every time they ventured onto the battle field.
“Why didn’t my medic tears die in all of those battles?,” I asked Holy Spirit. I’m amazed that they had survived all of those deadly abusive word arrows that sliced me to the core, but then I understood…
Hedgehogs have quills. Turtles have shells. But tears have the COMPLETE PROTECTION OF MY LORD, MY GOD.
El Elyon, God Most High, thank you for always protecting me. Thank you for choosing me when I thought that I was only a broken heart lying in a puddle of tears. Thank you for saving me when I felt like a mostly erased image of someone that I didn’t even want to be, but you heard my cries of, “Lord, take me, all of me, because I can’t do it anymore!” Thank you for equipping me with a heart that heals from the inside out. I live only because Jesus overcame death, and through my life, which is now filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit… Jesus lives on — through me.