the Man inside of a man

I was unlovable. Surely I was all crooked and deserved every unsuitable thing. To all that was right and good, I was a vandal. I did bad, I had been done bad to, and I believed bad was what was coming me. Prime for intervention or encounter, all my insides were hanging out. I was a walking, talking, hemorrhaging mesh of guts and mangled heart. One brave soul dared to wander near as our paths collided, grace came into focus.

You were not bloody but bruised, a few dings and dents to speak of. Looked like an alabaster canvas to me. I was crimson and coal. My soul stark dark but my eyes searching for light, for white. So kind. So unlikely, so unlike me yet just...like...me.

Time became times and you continued to come and I longed for more time. My tattered mess of a dress was no matter to you. Your dingy knees seemed clean to me in light of my suet. Inhale, exhale as I fuddled through my story. My narrative scribbled out on coffee-rung napkins and never-sent letters. It was mine to speak of, to unfold and lay before your imovable eyes. Those striking, clear eyes seemed luminous enough to diffuse my shadows. I felt myself rewinding, age five, alive, child-like. A time and a place retraced deliberately with a divine finger. I saw you, seeing me, as innocent and unspoiled. My beginning, middle and end cropped in those two windows without veils, giving no place for shame to hide. I saw Him...and He saw me.

I knew you knew. Somehow, you'd discerned that I was more than my marred skin that I looked so uncomfortable in. Somehow you had seen the actual me beyond the serrated edges of my shattered double-minded mirror. The me that was brought forth in skilled love and desire...the me that was called forth from the depths of death to be rescued and restored. A wounded woman-girl who had been identified by the Man inside of a man. I was who he said I was. I was His and He would have me.

Something true, a vast and vacant blue sky that invited me to freefall into it, fling all of myself wildly into it and never look back again. If I were to touch Him again, if I were to be touched, this unclean woman, again...all would be made new, be made honest and true. But now the shadows of shame, the haunts of a harlot claw me from within, desperate to rip away any fragile hope that may take root.

What to do with this tremendous tension that would be the deal maker or breaker. How to remedy or resolve me, when I don't deserve this beautiful thing called Love? How could a pure man touch me, defiled by my very attempts at finding love outside of Love himself? How could he embrace me, as unkept child,  keep me as Father?

The ravaging on the inside of my soul, violent. Could He stop this bleeding? This issue of blood, healed with more blood? My crimson for His crimson? Being nothing more than the sum of my parts, weighing nothing more than the debt that I owed, I collapsed disheveled before His feet. I will let you and You, love me.

Could I believe you enough, until I became what you beheld? Could I entrust myself to your capable hands, that you would crush me with love until all the bad bled good? Yes. Bleak, weak, surrendered in sheer defeat. Yes, again and again now in desperation. YES, in pleading, stop this bleeding. And you did what you do. You performed your word, as truth, like a skilled surgeon, opening the cavities of my life, pouring back in all that was lost. You gave me one to nurse me, love me through, dress my wounds, though even he was broken. One so wanting to be more like You, God. And yet I met You, a kind, gentle, patient Man inside of the man you brought to me. He knew. He...just...knew. He saw me like you.