Hoping to Survive....

This last while has been a completely unexplainable, no words will quite do, period in my life.

My eyes are being opened to the world. I am being drawn to the nations.

There. I said it. In print, where it can't be revoked.

Can I now say that I'm absolutely terrified by that last statement?

Jesus is asking me to let Him have my heart in new and deep ways.

(hold on a second, I need to light candles as prayers if I'm actually going to write this)

An hour ago I sat in a hot bath, filled with sweetly scented salts made by a little company in Canmore, and fought back the tears. I finished reading a novel I picked up yesterday, and while it wasn't exactly the story that made my heart break, it was still a catalyst.

I wonder, at regular intervals these days if I am going to survive this expanding of my heart.

As I allow Jesus ever nearer, my heart is beginning to break.

Like a cadence repeating itself through my brain these days is the oft quoted prayer, "Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God."

Even now, years later, I remember so clearly the first time I heard someone quote this prayer. This funny Iranian evangelist, who lived in Alabama, a guy named David Nasser was preaching the story of Ezra - tearing his clothes and weeping at the sins of Israel, and he asked those sitting in the audience, "Does your heart break at the things that break God's heart?"

That question burrowed deep - I remember going back to high school after that weekend, and sitting in class and listening to all of the tales of partying and dissatisfaction from the weekend, and feeling my heart shatter, as I thought about the heart of the father for these people who surrounded me.

The prayer came back again, a whisper in my consciousness as I taught Sunday school a few weeks back. We worked our way through the story of Jesus clearing the temple courts, and stopped to pose the question, "What makes Jesus angry today?" It came on the heels of hosting a weekend of prayer in my home. A weekend where I found myself praying my way across a map of the world, and through the faces and hearts that belong to those nations.

I have guarded my heart selfishly and callously for years, wanting to avoid the heartache I knew would come quite inevitably if I allowed myself to truly see other people and other nations.

I have held myself in check, carefully, letting very few burrow past my defenses.

Those who do, sometimes surprise me.

I wept over a beautiful young girl who was three when she lost her life to the preventable illness of malaria.

I wept when dear friends suffered a miscarriage.

And now, so many things are slipping past those defenses.

I find my heart shattering on a nearly daily basis.

And I wonder, some days, if I will survive this painful stretching.