Batter my heart

HOLY SONNETS.

XIV.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. 

Source:
Donne, John. Poems of John Donne.vol I.
E. K. Chambers, ed.
London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 165.

The prayers we pray are dangerous. That old adage of careful what you wish for can be used for prayer too. It is a dreadful responsibility to know that you can talk to God and that He takes you seriously.

What I pray for happens. Maybe that makes me crazy to some, but there's this truth inside of me, a knowing that the divine exists, that I can connect to it, and that somehow my doing so changes things. I can't always look up, but when I do, I know this to be true.

So I pray for a generation yet to be born, my children whom I have never met. I pray for my husband to fall in love with Jesus and to prosper at whatever he puts his hand to while learning to live well as a single woman. I pray for peace in my work place, for people around me to know how valuable they are and find their purpose. I pray that love and faithfulness will never leave me and that God will keep my family safe until He calls them home.

I pray for things too, like the ability to bless others, clothing, a place to call my own. I prayed for my great grandmother's China hutch that now sits in my living room and a guitar given to me by the wonderful Jordan Brubaker. It doesn't mean as much as hugs and smiles from friends; their presence in my life is the greatest presant I could receive. But they serve as reminders of love when I forget how truly loved I am. I think my name means beloved because God knew I would need to be reminded daily of this truth.

My song for Jesus has been "Hurts so good." Life has not been easy, but it has been good. In the pain, I find my prayers are heard, my friends are true, and my sorrows are not forever or for nothing. I am learning there is more to give because I have walked the valley of the shadow with a good shepherd. He is ravishing my heart, and I am learning to trust the battering as an invitation to intimacy.

God is not someone to be known to me with my mind. I don't want to know about him or what others think about him. I want to be with him as a dear friend and a close lover. My maker is my husband. (If this makes me a mystic, so be it.) There's intimacy without dissection here. We are together. I am with the I AM. Without him, I would have died a long time ago in a hotel room in Texas. But he keeps me. This is my relationship with God.

So I pray that He batters my heart because I long to always belong to Him. I pray that He will capture me when my heart goes after less than his plans for me. I pray for things to not work out if it's not what He wills. But He promised to give me the desires of my heart. When I open my hands in this way, I find myself wanting different things than what I previously had imagined.

These prayers I pray are dangerous. Yet He's not tame. Knowing him is not safe, but it's good. May you know him the way you know your best friend.