My journey back to Eden...

I am overwhelmed...

By beauty. The battle. The ache. The stretching. The restoration. Love. Grace. Courage. Strength. Life. Relationship.

I've said it before and I'm saying it again. I don't know how He puts up with me. He listens to me...to the movement and desires of my heart. He gives me exactly what I ask for. Exactly and then some. It's pretty incredible. For the first time in my life I can honestly and wholeheartedly say I am in love... I am all caught up in love. A love that adores, pursues, treasures, and fights. A love that challenges, stretches, redeems, and demands patience and grace. It's beautiful, unnerving, reckless, ground shaking, steadfast. It fights for my heart in ways no one has before. Fights for my relationship with Him...that it is first and foremost. I've never experienced a romantic love that lets you breathe. A romantic love that soothes, calms, restores, and revitalizes. A romantic love that is gritty, has substance and weight to it, and sometimes stings. The kind of love that gives abundantly and (as my sister M.P. would say) gratuitously-which is graciously to the nth degree. And then challenges me to give when it can't...to know and experience the kind of unconditional love that gives patiently and graciously. The kind I avoided and shut myself off to. The kind of love that is no holds bar honest with a humbling vulnerability. The kind that says...this is what I want...but I'll wait because there will be absolutely no compromise and no settling when it comes to your heart.

I have had mixed responses. My response has been a little bit of caution. Some reservation. Holding my breath because it seems too perfect. Embracing. Trusting. Grumbling. Stomping my feet. Crossing my arms. Holding my breath because I want it all now. I pout and throw tantrums because it's uncomfortable. I don't want to be patient. It's raw. I feel stripped and naked. I ache and feel stretched...the way I swear taffy would feel if it could feel anything when it's in the taffy puller machine.

He lays before me my deepest desires and longings. Beside that He places the truth I know and the lies I knew. He doesn't stop there...last but by no means least-He gently and very precisely places the ugly dirty dark places in my heart that have yet to be addressed, smack dab in the middle. It makes me angry. I dislike feeling angry. I want it to be separate. A category for each...no meshing of any kind...I don't want what I've dreamed of...known and desired to be true to be tainted by what I've experienced and still need to face. To have all of my heart sided by side, touching and mingling together is like going to the beach at night and drinking a coffee protein shake, eating chocolate covered strawberries with liver and onions...you just don't do it. My ugly and dirty is=memories. Things I haven't thought of since they happened. The feelings these memories usher in are so overpowering and surprisingly so fresh and real...its a bit disorienting. It's habits and lies I've just settled in to living through. It's the truth of my selfish entitled heart. When my ugly collides with my lovely(=the Truth, beauty, love, and deep promised desires I live in, fight for, and seek relentlessly) the reaction is like a high school chemistry experiment gone bad...volatile, deafening, and pungent.

When He sits me down and puts me face to face with my ugly and lovely, I feel like I'm caught in a set of ocean waves. At first it's no big deal. I take a deep breath and fill my lungs with air and duck under the water to miss the wave. I think this is no problem...it's just a wave. Then I get caught up in the rolling water. Entangled in it's movement and power-unabe to sense up or down...my brain reminds me I can't breathe under water...my chest starts to burn, my lungs feel like they're going to bust, and I start clawing through the water fighting for a sense of direction. Panic sets in a bit. Then just when I can not fight any longer...when the air starts to slowly escape through my lips...I see a glimmer of light. There is a brief reprieve from the summersaulting water and I am again oriented. Arms start frantically pushing me to the light and as I reach the surface...I gasp for air. Muscles spent from the fight. Lungs on fire. Eyes blurred and stinging. As I take my second breath...CRASH...another wave. It's pretty wicked and completely exhausting physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

That guy I mentioned before. You know the one that made me feel like a high school girl with a crush. We're talking. Dating actually. Which took me almost 2 months to wrap my head around and admit to. Some of you are cheering and are jumping for joy right now. Others probably feel a bit indifferent about it, maybe thinking so what...what's the big deal. Yet others are not too thrilled. Concerned about timing. About life situations and being wise, patient, and cautious. Everyone has there own interpretation of dating. What it means. What it looks like. From my past experience of dating, what I know, the examples I've seen people living out, the drama and heartache of it all. I didn't want to have anything to do with it. It seemed like no good came from dating. In fact I swore I wouldn't just date to get to know someone. If I dated it would be more like courting. It would be someone I knew and trusted and it would be with the understanding that lifelong commitment was the goal. It wasn't to just hang out...make out...go out. It was to be a apart of His story. Bring Him glory. Bring life and open the hearts of His beloved to life and truth. Dating is a commitment, not just to each other but to His story. It is not settling and it is holding each other accountable to His standards...keeping each other strong. God knows, and my past shows, I haven't been strong enough alone. And if my man makes me weaker instead of stronger...well then he's not my man. No compromise...I can't regress and turn my back on who I am and where I came from. There's no way I'm going to settle...never again. To do so would kill my heart.

My man. He's...perfect(I know I know...here's a bucket for you as you get sick). He is everything I've asked Him for and more. That feels so risky to admit. Kind of like admitting I'm having a really good quiet day at work(and I'll just say you NEVER admit to that in the ED-there are grave consequences for that kind of foul language). He's one of the main reasons I've been having some one on one ocean wave time the last handful of weeks. He called it butterflies. I call it the perfect storm...you know George Clooney style waves not Caribbean vacation, frozen drink in hand, lying on a blown up floatie as the crystal blue water laps against the floatie and lulls you to sleep kind of waves. They're (God and my man) challenging me to let go of control and stay present and engaged in every moment. To trust my heart and convictions but not deny what I'm feeling and thinking. Keep Him at the center at all costs. Put my heart out there instead of holding on to it closely-safely tucked where it can not be touched or seen. Love, as He does, unconditionally no matter the circumstances. Dont shut down. Don't rebuild walls. Because this is different. This isn't like anything I've experinced. He is not like any man I've ever known. They're taken me to a new depth of honesty and trust. I know that seems like a given...but in the midst of the waves of emotions, feelings, memories, wounds...to be honest and trust...to remember who you are vs who you were...where you've been vs where you are...it is an epic battle. One He's(God) been getting me ready for all my life.

I was talking to my man not too long ago. It was one of those hard honest conversations. The kind I'd rather not have because it doesn't feel safe. The kind that leaves me completely stripped...as if I had gotten up and stood in the middle of the room and removed everything I had on...figuratively speaking of course. Nothing left on me every article of clothing, bobby pin, hair tie, necklace...taken off and lying on the floor. In the midst of me stripping, being honest with my heart and sharing it I experenced a new truth about relationships.

As I interacted with Him about relationships...He opened my heart to the truth of what He created it for. Enjoyment...Bliss really. Eden. There isn't a lot we know about Eden. What we do know is enough to get the creative juices flowing and leave us daydreaming about what it must have been like. To live as God created us to live...everything at our fingertips. No stress. No trying. No working. Heaven on earth. Walking with Him in the cool of the day talking, laughing, enjoying...each other. Whew...but we fell. The fall was a great one...not just a little stumble or trip. No small lacerations or abrasions. Something worse than broken bones...broken hearts. Each time He gave us a chance for redemption, a chance to know and live in our promised land we were fickle and chose something other than Him. How many prophets in the Old Testament did He send pleading His case? He doesn't give up, He continues to pursue us, continues to offer Eden, and ask us to choose Him.

When we accept this offer, first choosing Him second embracing Eden, we more or less choose to hike up Mt. Everest. Actually, I think more people have successfully reached the summit of Everest. See, the journey back to Eden is lifelong. When we choose Him/Eden we make a conscious decision to fight through the fall of our hearts...the lies, wounds, dirty, ugly, shameful, appalling pieces of our hearts and bring them into the His light...to be seen and known. Faith says I trust you, I trust all I am will not shake you. Hope says I trust you, I trust He has opened your eyes to see the truth of my heart and you will not run and scream when you see all of me. Love says no matter how you take this, I care for you. I will not shrink back or shut down. I will take the chance you won't love me in return...I will give, love and share even if you don't or can't.

The journey through my fall of Eden consciously started 5 years ago...the landscape has turned from Death Valley to Denali. Arid and lifeless to wild, breathtaking, dangerous, overwhelming and ALIVE. The dream and desire He set in my heart before I was even conceived is now in my vision...still fully out of my grasp but if I stretch out my fingers as far as I can possibly stretch them I can... just... barely... touch it. I see it...I feel it...I hear and know it. And it propels me forward...more driven...more perseverant...more determined to not give in or give up.

I told Soul( aka B Fly...Flynn...Bethany) when we were sitting on a dock last summer my man...the man He has for me is going to be insanely incredible. To be able to lead in a relationship with me. To be able to handle my honesty...my heart...my past...my strength...my rambling. The strength he has to possess. The relationship with Him to know how to fight for and with me...the desire for more than meets the eye and the ferocity to fight for it and settle for nothing less. I can't even begin to imagine who he must be...now I know. And that makes people uncomfortable. Saying that makes people cringe a little. It definitely feels risky and dangerous. What if I'm wrong. I could be...anything is possible. I am confident...It's different this time. I feel it in my heart. It unavoidable. It's uncompromising. It's demands my attention. What I'm sure of is at this moment, the moment I am experiencing as I write this...I'm in love. He is the man I've been praying for and writing to in a journal. And that's what I'm living in. That's what I'm interacting with. If I didn't I would be living apart from my heart and I will never do that again. This is my journey back to Eden...and it's refreshing and unnerving to have someone new join me. I love it...