simple joy

It’s what we really want, isn’t it?

To love & be loved.

…

Recently,  I spent the evening in  Boulder with indie artist Ingrid Michaelson [that is to say I was at her concert].  She has become a recent favorite, her lyrics poetically expressing the longings, desires, tensions, hopes, and fears we know all too well:

And we are so fragile,
And our cracking bones make noise,
And we are just,
Breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys

 

Open me up and you will see
I’m a gallery of broken hearts
I’m beyond repair, let me be
And give me back my broken parts

Happy is the heart that still feels pain
Darkness drains and light will come again
Swing open your chest and let it in
Just let the love, love, love begin

Everybody, everybody wants to love
Everybody, everybody wants to be loved

It’s where we land. It’s where we live.

So simple.

Incredibly profound.

And it’s all in shambles.

If we are one ounce of honest we know we are all incredibly skilled at messing up love.  We’re bent (that’s how Dan Allender puts it).  The very thing we long for, we thwart and block and hide from. We love and long for love out of the wounds and lies we’ve incurred along life’s winding path. We’ve never known love in its pure form.  We’ve never known Love himself.

And so, He allures us.

Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. [hosea2]

Such beauty. Such strength & tenderness. It’s His brutal kindness, really, that Love would allure and lead us to a desert place to speak tenderly to our hearts.

May you know what it is to be allured.

To be led to a desert place.

And spoken to tenderly.

May you know what it is to be loved by Love himself.

By Kjersten Halvorsen, MA | 719.232.4132
Return to: http://KjerstenHalvorsen.com