Resurrection

I have been experiencing bankruptcy in most of my relationships lately. It's weird. I am beginning to see that God is allowing/promoting that...to create intimacy with him. Even in the opportunities I do have, things seem empty most of the time. I'm in the midst of one relationship right now that is intense and great, inasmuch that a lot of healing and morphing is going on. So, that is really incredible--but even in that, I sense that this is one of the only arenas where God is sanctioning any kind of growth activity. It appears that you are largely thwarting relational stimulus for me, Lord. On an objective level it is intriguing, and on an emotional level, devastating. I find myself quite lonely and sad at times. I suspect you are orchestrating that, as well, knowing my penchant for "mainlining" people connections if I can get away with it. So, as I sit here lonely and in pain Lord, what would you say to me? I sense that you are answering my prayers to be more intimate with you, but when you answer in a way that causes pain, even though I know it can be your way, I am never expecting it and not aware of what it's going to look and feel like, until it is upon me. On an objective level it blesses me that you care enough about me to allow me to see this, but what a hard place to find myself in. I have been riding the tide of my newfound life as a person who isn't morbidly obese anymore, and it's been beyond wonderful in so many ways. But as things begin to normalize, and the pendulum is swinging back more toward the middle, I still always come back to the same thing. I need intimacy with you, and nothing else is going to satisfy, and old issues resurface. I think that medicating with food has so many roots in my loneliness and my fear that you are not really going to show up and rescue me from my pain. Deep seated fears that stem from childhood wounds, damaged trust, and terrors. So now that I've been asking you to bring on your agenda, it seems you are allowing me to come up empty on the horizontal relational front so much of the time. It pains me that once deep relationships have become shallow, and it seems to be beyond my control to remedy that. Friends are moving on, and going in different directions. Once idyllic life with comrades has faded into memory. Your way of going about stuff with me makes sense. I ask you to give me more of yourself and the inevitable is that you would remove the satisfaction I find in others to make some room for yourself. And yet, as I am recently discovering afresh, nothing is wasted. You may allow my current relationships to become stale, but that doesn't mean you're finished with them and the role they play in my experience--and theirs for that matter. I'm realizing anew that you are in the resurrection business; that the connections we form over a lifetime are things that you not only instigate, but can redeem and build things out of them that we would never have anticipated. That just because a relationship doesn't work well or isn't healthy, doesn't mean that you aren't able to reconfigure it to suit your purposes. As I sit here waiting for the clock to move over into Easter Sunday, I am encouraged to remember that life after death is a repeated theme throughout everything that happens to us here in this realm, and not just reserved for the passing into the afterlife. You are able to bring life from death of relationship as well. So Lord, I ask that you would resurrect the relationships in my life that are dormant, stale, or just plain dead, in your timing, according to your business if it is agreeable with your will. I also ask that you would help me to be content with you. Risky prayer. Being content in waiting on you may mean a long wait. I've never been good at waiting. Lord, I know I can't control and manipulate you. So, give me grace to accept that, and to wait with knowledge that your ways are so much higher and better than my own intentional and unintentional fumbling. Quicken me to you, even more than I've experienced so far, and please prepare me for that. I must confess I'm a little afraid of what that may mean for me, so I ask that you would calm my fears, and where possible, please be gentle. I feel so fragile sometimes.