It Took Twelve Times

a meditation on being held by love

I don’t know what to write. I ask myself what I’m feeling, what I’m thinking. But this is how we do things, isn’t it? You’ve taught me to trust you’ll give me words. You always have. I like that my words blend with yours. For my place of deepest insecurity — having nothing to say or nothing to speak — you say, let’s just have a conversation. Yes, yes, I would like that.

Are you here? I feel unsettled now, although it is so beautiful here outside, in the back corner of our garden, where I sit. Roses are still blooming, though it is October, and hummingbirds are darting around behind me. One has just dipped low to my left and is perched in the pittosporum. The neighbor kids’ voices from over the fence are beautiful; one of them is helping their dad using a shop vac. And there is the rumble of a jet plane overhead.

Oh, now it is quiet. My heart is quiet. You settle me. I know you are here — the knowing that comes not in a physical sense, where my legs or arms or torso feel you in me. But my soul swells with a knowing, a recognition of the feeling of being known.

I remember our first argument. I was so sad, desperate. In my journal, for so many months, I wrote, “How do I love better, Father?” You didn’t answer that question. Or at least, in that moment, I didn’t recognize you answering it. But then, that day, on the floor of our family room, the house empty midday — Justin at work and the kids just old enough so that all three, for just a few hours, could be at school — I heard you say it: the words I had never heard you say before, but now I hear, in my heart, you say, over and over, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

You said it that first time — ”I love you” — and I pushed the words away. I wanted you to tell me how I was bad, how I was messing up. I wanted you to agree that something was fundamentally wrong with me — that I was too selfish, too lacking. And you didn’t. You told me, “I love you.”

You had to say it so many times. I can’t remember how many times you said it. You kept repeating it, and I didn’t know how to believe you, until finally, after you said it for what must have been at least the twelfth time, I felt my heart soften. That is the only way I know how to describe it. There was a cracking open in me; something that was formerly hard and resistant to your words fell away.

I was so desperate for you, Father. I needed you so much. I need you so much. How could you love someone like me? And I began to believe, in that moment, for the first time in my life, that you did. And since then? Well, I love you telling me. I want to hear it. I don’t deserve it — I know I don’t, but your love makes me know that it is okay for me to feel loved by you, even if it doesn’t make sense — that your love is love because it is who you are and not who I am. But you love me. And I am yours. And I love being loved by you.

There is a windchime. Do you hear it? How lovely it sounds, its gentle ringing in the breeze. Aren’t the neighbor kids — their voices — hilarious and wonderful? “Papa! Papa! Papa!” they yell. How loved they are. I can hear it in their voices.

Do you like it when I call out your name? I so want to be near you. I want to call your name. I love it when I feel you calling mine.

I think the word “conversation” — what it invites, what it offers in the way of connection, of possibility, of togetherness — is beautiful. And the conversation we’re having now? It is okay with me that it isn’t one where I hear you speaking in my heart — it is okay with me, anyway, that you don’t always use words. You did that a lot before, when we first started having conversations. I would hear you speak words in my heart. It helped me to know you, to begin to understand and believe that you are everywhere and in everything. But now I can believe you are still here, even if I can’t hear your voice in my heart. Thank you. Thank you for being so very big, and I am so very small.

But, you know, for someone who doesn’t trust her own words, your words in my heart ground me. They fill me. I feel so loved — and so close to you — and secure in my being — when I can hear you. Please help me to recognize your voice in all the ways you speak. I am small, and I am doing my best, I think, to try to hear you. So break open what is interfering. Remove it. Destroy it. Bring me deeper into your heart. It is my home. I want to know more about home.

Will you hear me when I speak? Will you recognize it when I am everywhere, all around you? Do you see me in the ground? No, but I am there. Do you see me in the sound, the air, the breath you breathe? No, but I am there. You can’t see me, but you know me. You can’t always hear me, but I am speaking.

Yes, you are right. I speak in a language you don’t always feel you understand. But you understand what love is, as I have taught you. And it is through love that I speak.

If you want to know me more, hear me more, see me more, then desire to understand love. Breathe it in. Let it nourish you. Bring it forth in your actions. Watch what it grows, how it lives, what it creates.

Love is timeless. I promise you, it is timeless, limitless, unquantifiable, beyond what words can describe, and yet it is what you, at your core, when I made you, are made of.

I remember the day of our conversation. I remember wanting to cradle you in my arms. So I did. I held you. You pushed back against it. But I held on. I always hold on. I am always holding you.

With the words I spoke, you could sense me holding you, but it is more than words that hold you in my heart — that gives you movement and life and light and joy. I fuel you with my love, and you may wrestle against me, with me, to let me show you how I do.

I don’t mind telling you, again and again, how much I love you. How else can you survive? It is the core of you, your desire to be loved by me, because it was with my breath and my hand and my mouth speaking words of love to you that gave you life.

You could not live without my love. It is the ground on which you walk, the light that shines around you and within you. This is why you can hear me and speak my name in all the beauty you see. Love is speaking to you in all moments.

And with your desire to receive that love, and live more deeply in it, you can inhabit, even more deeply, the home I’ve created for you — the home of love, where I am, and you are, and where your eyes and ears and senses can deepen and sharpen and understand, with your faith, how we are one, together; for my love is in you, forever.

The air is sweet and mostly still, but there must be a slight breeze, because I hear the windchime gently singing again. The children next door have quieted. No longer are they calling, “Papa, Papa!” in their high, delicate voices. Now they are laughing, and a finch is singing. And a lizard suns itself on a rock, nodding its head to a rhythm I can’t hear. Above it, the salvia fills with bees, its branches trembling as they visit one small pink flower after another.

• David Benner wrote “Being with God.”

• Justin Camp wrote “What Comes After Silence?”

• Sample ➼ “Walking with God” by John Eldredge (redux)

• Sample ➼ “Hearing God” by Dallas Willard (redux)

• Encounter ➼ “To be Here with God”

• Audio Experience ➼ “How to Become More Aware of His Voice”

• Rapt’s Feelings Wheel ➼ Discover your Inner Life

We updated Rapt’s ‘Best of’ lists this week. Lots of new stuff!

• Bestselling, Top-rated Books

• Inspiring Faith-based Films

• New & Chart-topping Songs

• Trending & Varied Podcasts

• Helpful & Well-made Apps

• Brilliant Email Newsletters

• Accessible But Weighty Bible Studies

• Uplifting & Convenient Devotionals

• Mary DeMuth is a literary agent, daily podcaster at PrayEveryDay.show, Scripture artist, speaker and the author of over 50 books.

• Amy Duggar King grew up on TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting,” but today, she’s encouraging others to be free of dysfunctional families and cycles of abuse.

• Vicki Courtney is the bestselling and award-winning author of numerous books for women, tweens and teen girls.

• J.R. Briggs is an author and the founding director of Kairos Partnerships, an organization committed to equipping kingdom leaders.

• Andrew DeCort, author and academic, founded organizations that have reached over 20 million people with the invitation to nonviolent spirituality.

• Christian Mungai serves as the global movement pastor at Mariners Church in Irvine, California, where he has been on staff since 2007.

P.S. Who should we interview next? Click here to let us know. And what new question would you like us to ask them? Click here to submit your suggestion.

“God has created us for intimate friendship with himself — both now and forever. This is the Christian viewpoint. It is made clear throughout the Bible.”
—Dallas Willard

Do you have an intimate friendship with God? In your prayer life, have you yet developed a conversational relationship with Jesus?

If your answer is not yet, will you engage today with one or more of the resources listed above?

With so much hope,

Editor-at-Large, Rapt Interviews
Creator of Loop for Women
Co-executive Director, Gather Ministries