I wrote this story awhile ago actually, but I figured I would put it up here because its my favorite story that God has given me.
Oh to be loved! How I long for that experience: to be needed and desired, to be chased and to know without a doubt that I posses someone’s deepest affections. I long to be folded up in their arms and to know that I am safe. Embarking on a great adventure with a companion who will never fail me would be utterly wondrous. The things we would conquer! The heights we would reach! The depths we would explore and the love that would be forever ours.
No, I cannot afford to let myself indulge in such silly fantasies. For that is what they truly are, at least that is what I must tell myself. For someone in my position, I cannot even dare to hope for such a reality. Yet no matter how hard I try to push it away, no matter how hard I try to bury it beneath layers of callous, it always comes back. Wriggling its way into my heart and plunging its merciless roots into my very core.
Sometimes I can cover the pain at least for a while. Letting my mind slide into oblivion while another uses me for their own sick pleasure. It is reduced to a dull ache then, just a distant throbbing, Laborious and afflicting, yet to some extent livable.
Looking back on days gone by, I remember the ignorance into which I was born. If only I could return to those days and let myself be blind just a few moments longer. I still felt the pain then, yes, but I had hope of a sort. I thought I could free myself from its grasp, I thought I could climb out of the pit of longing I had inherited. So began my search. I began giving myself to others to see if they could fill my emptiness. My heart came first and my body followed. For a while, I felt I had the answer. Finally, the solution was within my grasp! However, as I would discover, I could never reach it. I could never trully be loved.
Selfishness was my first. It seems as though I have known him forever. As children, we would play and flirt; always tempting, but never commiting. As I grew, his promises of excitement and adventure became even more enticing. He told me I could be burdenless in my pursuit of enjoyment if I would just forsake the shackles others put on me with their needs and desires. After all, it was only mine that mattered.
I remember the day I finally gave in. I buried myself in the abandon of Selfishness. I pursued him with a singleminedness I had never known before. At first it was incredible. Everything I wanted I got, and in the high of the moment, I saw only beauty and wonder. However, afterward I would lay alone, my desires stronger than ever and never satisfied. Whenever I closed my eyes, they would come to torment me, and whenever I tried to slake that thirst, it would leave me even more empty and dejected than before. Peace had deserted me and freedom was never mine to begin with. It is somewhat ironic, I suppose. In my pursuit of freedom, I willingly gave myself over to bondage.
One night I confronted Selfishness. All those promises he had made, all those visions he had painted for me; they were all a lie. They were only a tool to entice me, and I was only a tool for his pleasure. That was the first night he took me against my will. I tried to fight at first. I scratched and clawed, I beat my fists against his back, I screamed for help that would never come. The first few times, I desperately tried to escape, but after awhile I gave up hope of ever getting away. I would just lay there while he used me. When he left, I would weep until my tears ran dry. It seemed as though my very heart was being wrenched from chest. Sorrow became my constant companion and loneliness my only reality.
That was when I met Guilt. At least he made me no promises; he gave me no false pretences. He told me I would never be happy with him, but that he would reward me handsomely for my services. At least with him I was willingly giving myself. Or so I thought at the time. After awhile I realized that I had no choice, not really.
I spent my days listless, and apathy was a word I was well acquainted with. At night I wallowed in the perverted comfort of Guilt. Indulging in his self-condemnation was somehow better than engaging the true state of things.
Hope was as foreign to me as apathy was familiar. What else was there for me? This pathetic life I had chosen held nothing more than pain. I had not the will to live and even less to die. Therefore, I decided not to think about it. I decided simply to ignore my despair. If I never faced it, it could never conquer me, right?
Despite my difficulties, I found a small measure of alleviation from the material benefits of my arrangement with Guilt, and I quickly learned that others were willing to offer me the same. Jealousy and Laziness were my first customers. Hatred, Gossip and many others soon followed.
After awhile I became wealthy enough to choose my patrons, which allowed me some level of autonomy, but in reality, nothing had changed. I was still a slave. Master though I was at deceiving myself, I could not fool myself into thinking I was anything different. I had fallen to a depth out of which I had no hope of climbing. As much as I tried to deny that fact, I would one day have to face it.
That day came swiftly. For so long I had been fighting against desperation, holding it at bay only to delay the inevitable. This hopelessness was much stronger than I was and I could no longer fight it. How terrible was that hour! When misery’s icy fingers fixed its grip on my heart. I felt as though I was suffocating from the utter desolation of my condition. I had nothing; nothing to live for and certainly nothing to hope for.
For what is life without love? What other purpose could my existence possibly have than to love? Yet I had none and worse I was not worthy of it. I was not worthy to possess affection or even to give it. I could hear agony threatening to overtake me.
So I ran. I ran as fast and as far as my body would carry me if only to escape my fate for a few more moments. I saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing except that I had to run. A fear more terrible than anything I could have imagined raked through me.
Finally, though, I could run no more. My last coherent thought was that I found myself in a desert with nothing but barrenness from one horizon to the other. How fitting a landscape for my deserted soul.
Then anguish beat down upon me. I tore my clothes in desperation and collapsed upon the sand. On my knees, naked, and weeping with every breath I had left in me, I faced a great unspeakable horror.
I saw myself. I saw who I truly was; a wretched, pitiful, despicable being. Curse the merciless sun that revealed every blemish, every stain, and every rotten and decaying lesion that scarred me! I screamed and cried until my throat burned with exertion. I pleaded for death to take me.
Death, however, already had me. I was foolish to think that I ever was alive. I had been living a perpetual death from the day I first drew breath. I did not even know what life was.
It was then, in that moment when I was conquered by all the miseries I had tried so desperately to avoid, that I noticed a shadow sweep over me. Prepared for some new torture, I lifted my tearstained eyes to the source of that shadow. What I saw was a sight beyond imagining. The face of Love himself stared back at me. Of course, I had never met him, but I knew him. That face was more beautiful than even the choicest of the jewels my unfaithfulness had bought me.
Remembering my lewdness, I began to tremble. I was not worthy to have his gaze upon me. How could he even bear to look at me? Then to my shock, he bent down and lifted my chin. My eyes met his and I began to weep anew at the glorious sight of that gaze. I felt as though in that one look he saw all of who I was, all of what I had done. Yet he was not disgusted or repulsed as I would have expected. Instead, he took my shaking body into his arms and spoke tenderly to me.
His words moved my soul as though it was made to hear them. His voice penetrated to the deep layers of my heart, cutting through the callous and rooting out the seeds of wickedness that had for so long made their home there. He told me from then on he would take me as his betrothed, he would clothe me in robes of glory, he would satisfy my hungry soul, and best of all he would love me.
If a thousand pens were to undertake a description of the joy that I felt at that moment they would produce but a shadow of the original. Therefore, I shall not even attempt it. I must content myself simply to say that his love was life to me, and his love endures forever.
“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.”
Hosea 2:14-15
