For Auld Lang Syne and Severe Mercy

In July, I fell in love with a song—"This Love Won’t Break Your Heart" by Annelise Emerick, and it unofficially became my song of 2015. Shout out to Spotify for putting it on my Discover Weekly playlist in July—the hardest summer of my life thus far. 

I graduated college still feeling the pressure of "what are you doing with your life?" and starting a job I thought I'd never have. I lived in a house that made me sad and scared. I lived in a town that felt lonely and lacking. People walked away. I walked away from people. And I cried so much. So unbelievably much. (Crying is a thing for me, so hi.) 

Since then, I've healed in such a sweet way, but the journey through this summer was a rough one. 

For a while, tears didn’t bring relief like they usually do. I cried out of anger and bitterness and loneliness. I sobbed into the carpet and tried to write my way toward answers. I felt stuck and raw and young and alone. 

In short, the summer of 2015 broke my heart.

Wound after wound. It seemed like the Lord chose every piece of life I held close and took them away one at a time. He was so gentle, but it made me angry.

I valued those pieces more than Him, and He knew it. I esteemed fatal, worthless things, and He knew it. So He took them away. 

It hurt like hell, but was such a sweet and severe act of mercy.

The Lord didn’t leave me in my pride or entitlement or lies. He could have, and this summer would have been a walk in the park.

But He didn’t, and it wasn’t. Instead, He chose severe mercy.  

My birthday really sucked. I hit the bottom a few days earlier, and the shattered pieces of my heart just lay there. They didn’t immediately put themselves back together, and that was okay. I grieved so hard. Grieved a lot of endings, the gap between my expectations and reality, my post-college plans that didn’t pan out, and I'm so thankful they didn't. Grieved the end of my life as a college student, as a full-time learner, as a leader, as a child. Grieved that I couldn't be these things the way I used to, but learned that transition doesn't change who I am. 

The wounds of the summer brought me lower than my knees and beyond my own ability to help myself. But I finally obeyed. After lots of running and stubborn pride, I sank into the wild, horrifying freedom of trust.

And the pieces of my broken heart still lay there. And I laid there with them. Not fixing it, but surrendering. Some people might call it a plunge or leap of faith—I more accurately slid one toe in at a time—but I surrendered thanks to some crazy gift of grace. I spent the second half of the summer healing and hoping in His love. Hoping that His love offered more than an indefinitely broken heart. 

And I knew that it did. 

I knew that although my pieces lay shattered for a moment, He would speak tenderly to me and this time I would hear Him. 

And at the end of July, I heard a song that settled me and brought the first tingling pricks of healing. I listened to it all the way back from Atlanta during the first weekend of August and every week since then. It painted my second half of 2015 with hope.

(If you haven’t already been listening to it… you probably should. But don’t watch the music video because it’s stupid and cheesy and has nothing to do with this blog.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bvep2m2wNv0 

Annalise slays this song of auld lang syne and love that doesn't break her heart. Yeah, she’s probably not talking about Jesus, but I am. When I heard this song, it was all about Jesus because He is the only love that won't break my heart. I needed to sing about His love and know that it was for me: a human who deserves but doesn't receive the loneliness He's liberated me from. What a stinging, satisfying gift--a severe mercy. 

2015 was worse than scraped knees and bruised elbows. This year left scars that won’t go away. Lots of them. Each scar with its own unique, jagged design of broken pieces slowly fusing back together—pieces that I handled on my own for a while. Pieces that broke because of my own choices, because I took matters into my own hands and was really bad at it. 

The Lord doesn't promise freedom from wounds in 2016, but He does guarantee Himself. He guarantees His love if I believe. And I love singing the bridge of that song at the top of my lungs—“If you were lonely give it up. Here we are. This is the kind of love that doesn’t break your heart.”

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What I'm listening to: 

• The entire "Dear Wormwood" album by The Oh Hellos. 
• Greg Laswell throwbacks: What a Day, Comes and Goes in Waves... 
• "Pieces" by Bethel Worship/Amanda Cook. Oh. My. Word. 
• Everything instrumental 

What I'm reading: 

• Just finished Quiet by Susan Cain for the Common Intelligentsia book club! 
• Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. For class. Meh.
• Still working on Aristotle... So bye. 
• Also, virtual high five for all the self-control I exhibited by not buying every single book at Powell's bookstore during my trip to Portland this week.