You Belong to Me

I heard a song over two years ago and in the midst of a billion other songs that spoke straight to my heart, this one fell by the wayside.  And as God is so fond of doing, he brought it back around recently.  Tonight, feeling anxious and alone, I am coming back to that song.

I haven't even listened to the entire song yet.  Just these lyrics. And already I'm torn up inside.

You run, you hide
As tears fall from your eyes
They fall like snow
From a wounded soul
You hold inside
The hurt of great divide
The hole is starting to get old

Have you ever been that broken?

Have you ever looked at your life and thought "What have I become?"

Have you ever wondered "Who am I?"

I have.

And I can tell you that it is one of the most devastating feelings.  It is nearly debilitating to think about the person you want to be and hold that next to the person that you have become.  It is enough to crush your spirit.  There is something deep inside, sometimes buried so far that we never have to think about it, that whispers that we are not the person we want to be.  Sure, we all have moments, days, months, years of victory and intimacy with God.  But for most of us, we have run.  We have hidden.  We have fallen down so hard and so far.  Ours souls are so wounded by those who have inflicted pain on us, and by the injury done to ourselves.  And we are taught to hold it in.

As children, sometimes we're told not to cry.  Or rather, to stop crying.  Get over it.  I myself tell my children often to "Pull yourself together."  I try to begin with "Feel what you need to feel, but then calm down and pull yourself together so that we can discuss this."  Kris and I are always talking to our kids.  Sometimes they may get tired of hearing us.  But we won't stop talking to them.  Because we believe these discussions are important.  We believe that they need to see the side of discipline if it is necessary in a given scenario, but we also believe they need reaffirmation that God loves them and that God gives them second chances.  But I am getting ahead of myself; or at least, ahead of the lyrics above.

So we do as we are taught and we try to hide the pain.  We try to hide the fear.  And we especially try to hide the sin.  And isn't it exhausting?  Do you ever come to that place where you are overwhelmed and the feeling of being buried so deep by all the stuff is getting old?

Where do you go from here?

What do you do now?

How do you climb out of the hole?

How do you break through all the of rubble, all of the pain and hurt and resentment, bitterness, fear and doubt?

You take that string of hope, however frazzled it may have become, and you hold on.  

For dear life!

And you choose to believe that God will always say this to you:

So come back to the light, to the love
You will find it's been here all along
So come back to the start and you'll find in your heart
That you always belonged to Me.

Can you believe it?

Can you just TRY to believe that God intends that to speak directly to you? To your heart? Because I believe that this is meant for whoever is reading this. He wants YOU to hear this message. He wants you to come back home. I'll prove it. Look at the next lines in the song.

Just take the rope
I won't let it go
Give in
We can start again
I'm Life
I'm Hope
And I'm ready to explode
With how bad I want you back home

God calls us his children. He longs for us to come home to him. To bring our hearts back to him. Broken, shattered, destroyed as they are. He wants to hold them, to mend them, to restore them. We are the prodigal sons and daughters. And like the father who stood waiting and watching for his child to return home, when he sees you take hold of that hope, when he sees you turn your face toward him, lift your broken pieces up, he will not only welcome you but he will RUN to you. He will embrace you, pick you up in his arms and carry you in, where you belong.

You're my daughter, you're my son
You're the one I long to love
And you've heard I chose to die
Do you know you're the reason why?

Come back to the light of God's presence.

Run from the darkness that holds you down.

Come back to the love that has never stopped pursuing you.

It's always been there, even when you couldn't see, or refused to.

Come back to the start, where you knew no pain, loss, betrayal or sin - to innocence.

It's possible.

When you believe that, your heart will cry out with the truth that you have always belonged to God.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
1 John 4:16