You're Ashamed of Me

What if you loved someone?........and what if that someone...your "love"...... loved you back? except.....they only love you in private.

What if the expression of that love is so passionate that the exchange makes you feel more alive than you've ever felt before... intimate... affectionate... beyond expression.... and yet, no one will ever know because your love will not own up to you...? your "love" will not profess this love to you unless the two of you are alone, shielded and guarded from any eyes nor any ears that might get wind of what's really going on the moment everyone walks away, the moment the doors are closed, the moment the lights go out?

What if over and over and over you do everything that you can do to change that tide? what if word gets back to you that your "love" denies who you are to them and what your dynamic really is, and while you're claiming the other as "yours" the other one denies "what" you are even as their cologne or perfume is still on your skin? what if?

What if you'd love to walk away in anger and never speak their name again and yet the strength of your love keeps you bound there....for one more day, hoping the next day things will change......?? hoping that with each new sunrise your love will see you as "cool enough", "worthy enough", "good enough" to say "This person is mine.....I claim this person....I love this person......and because I love him privately....I want everyone to know publicly." .....but just as certain as the daylight came, the night came too....and yet nothing changed...........................................what if?

.....what if years went by and you started to feel it's weight....and your friends tell you that you're out of your mind and you have no self esteem and no dignity for not walking away and just forgetting your "love"........and yet you choose to get angry at your friends and defend your "love" because you know better and you've heard the things said in private.........and you know how capable your "love" is of loving you in private in spite of how many times you're denied in public.....and you endure and the night  comes and it's another day.

What if you learn to dread the quiet because all you can think of, replay, relive in your mind are those private seldom moments when all of your sacrifice is justified on the simple sweet breath in your ears, the breath that has ever softly mingled with the words "hold me", "touch me", or worst of all.....most painfully, agonizingly painful............"I love you."................What if?

Could you do that? could you keep on keeping on? day after day and night after night, of imagining beautiful days together, sunny days, summer days, winter days, springtime days, a million memories that you made together..........but lonely memories that were never shared with anyone else but you because your love denied them ever happening anytime someone else mentioned them............what if? how lonely, futile, and belittling would that feel?

This was me.

This was me for so long being ashamed of my "love"...........being ashamed of the One who loved me most of all............being ashamed that somehow the cool and progressive, the influential and the popular would consider me one of "those" people.....a freak, a zealot, a thumper..........

listen up world.........listen up good............let the noise of the world come to a whisper to a silence and let my voice ring out across the universe...........I LOVE JESUS CHRIST........I love Him for all that  He's forgiven..............for all the rottenness and filth that He's chosen to ignore in spite of His holiness.................because He sees me at my worst...and when He does He loves me the most and remembers that I'm a crummy human being incapable of a single good thing.  I love Him for loving me and never leaving me when a Friday night turned to Saturday and I sat in the prison of loneliness and quiet entertaining thoughts that broke His heart...........I love Him for never once having second thoughts about His love for me even when I denied Him by my actions............even when I should have spoken and I didn't ...........when a voice inside my heart said, "........tell someone......" or "tell the world"................................and I didn't.

I weep, I cry, I hurt beyond words and expression at the thought of my Savior, the maker of the universe, looking at me............  reduced from His glory enough to let one of His creation break His heart, as He quietly and dejectedly utters the painful, humiliating and piercing words........"......you're ashamed of me....."

Father, forgive me..........have me mercy on me a sinner...........restore all that the world has taken from me.........let me find the grace to redeem my days...............let me be branded with the image and love of your Son...........and let me never, never, never again break your heart by denying you-in-me...........us...........who WE are and who YOU are to ME.  I am Yours and YOU are MINE...........let my life be Yours to use, I have failed YOU over and over......and I'm tired of it........let the memories of what I've put you through please disappear forever........... and let the morning light find my life made new. Amen.