John 10:14-15

and only he who was troubled shall find rest,
and only he who descends into the nether world shall rescue his beloved,
and only he who unsheathes his knife shall be given Isaac again.
- Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

I think the point is that it's hard. And that it's supposed to be hard.

The following may be a bit complicated.

Maybe, and let's suppose this for a moment, that God wants my absolute attention. Suppose He knows better for me than I do myself. Suppose in order to get me to listen to Him, he has to break my legs.

So I sit with legs broken and mangled, and I have two choices: believe that God is unjust, and that he has no right to take from me what is so valuable to me, seemingly essential to me; or I can believe that God actually has my best intentions at heart. And suppose that He, this same God who has broken my legs, starts to hold me up and nurse me back to health, if only I would let Him.

It's only when a seed dies that it starts to grow and becomes something beautiful. It's such a nice thing to say but it can suck when you're the seed. Reading the scriptures scares the shit out of me sometimes. I think it was Augustine who said he felt like he was being pursued by his Holy Adversary.

But that dying to the self is what Christ did. So I can't call God on asking more out of me than He requires of Himself. Look at the gospels. Pain. Sacrificial Love. He gave us the example on how to lose yourself in order to find yourself.

I keep learning the context of this passage:

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

Conversely, when love becomes a god, it becomes a demon. Love ceases to be a demon only when it ceases to be a god; which of course can be re-stated in the form “begins to be a demon the moment it begins to be a god”. This balance seems to me an indispensable safeguard. If we ignore it the truth that God is love may slyly come to mean for us the converse, that love is God.

- Lewis, The Four Loves

So love, the concept of love (or maybe more accurately, the security that comes from being loved and loved in return by a woman), became a god and then became a demon. So maybe God needed to shake me up a bit and take away all my defenses, take away what made me feel secure. In the same way that if my legs make me stray, the best thing is to break them. If your heart offends thee, pluck it out.

God if it were only possible. I give you my heart and my hurt and my heartbreak and my desires.

Pray for Mike McSherry if you think about it. I love that kid so much.

There's so much I want to say.