“Would you take me in?
Take me deeper now”
I’ve sung the line of that song so many times. It wasn’t written about spirituality, or faith and yet the words speak to me every time I hear it.
I’ve choreographed those words twice, a decade apart and I’ve often wondered what I was thinking when I spoke those words over myself.
Deeper is almost never easier but it is often richer. Click To TweetMy husband and I are working our way through a course on emotional maturity as it relates to our spiritual lives and relationships. So far I’ve been impressed and challenged by the course. It is predicated on the premise that our spiritual growth can become stalled by lack of emotional growth. We cannot continue to grow spiritually without also addressing our emotional maturity.
The program is very accessible but also delves into topics and thoughts that we sometimes prefer to avoid: grief and loss, dark nights of the soul, the mystery of God’s action or apparent inaction in our hardest times. It digs deep into how we interact with God and others and has been pushing all of us involved to acknowledge areas where we still emotionally function like children.
I want to grow, but I also realize it hurts. I’m not afraid of the growth but sometimes I quake at the thought of the challenges I’ve faced in the past that have produced the most growth. I don’t want to go through those things again. It feels a bit like my memories of childbirth. Of course it was worth it but gosh I don’t want to experience that again. The stretching and tearing, feeling as though I was going to die.
I’ve been struggling with the fear of what might come ahead. But I also know that with everything I have been through so far, God has been with me. While I have certainly had difficult days, through all the struggles of the last three years I have experienced a regular sense of God’s nearness that has kept me going.
Relationships cannot remain stagnant and survive. They either grow deeper over time, or they die a slow death. I don’t want my relationship with God to die that way (or my relationship with anyone else I love.) That’s going to mean asking the hard questions and sometimes accepting a lack of answers but I think I’m willing to risk it.
“You calm the storms
And you give me rest
You hold me in your hands
You won’t let me fall
You steal my heart
And you take my breath away
Would you take me in?
Take me deeper now
And how can I stand here with you
And not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be
Any better than this?”
-Everything, Lifehouse
Love that Lifehouse song!
In my heart I’m quite secure,
and so I will come clean.
I’m every bit as mature
as a nineteen-year old Marine.
I’m serious about my profession,
I deal with life and death,
but I must make this confession:
it’s for beer that I draw breath.
Give me that cold nectar sweet,
and then, you’d best step aside
to witness quite the visual treat:
my blindfolded Harley ride!
A balanced life, you understand,
means a beer in either hand.