It’s beginning to look like another sleepless night, courtesy of caffeine and my friend amphetamine. I’ve grown kin to the bitter backend of a binge. Both my body and my mind yearn for sleep that they won’t find. I don’t know how to break the news to them. I suppose I’ll write to pass the time. 

It’s been so long since I’ve felt at home in my own heart. I’m afraid of what’s in there. I wonder why I’m stuck in my head all the time, all the while I refuse to give my heart any say because I don’t trust her. My head cannot function as my heart. I ask too much of him, and then wonder why he is such a mess. 

Recently, though, it seems that healing has begun. The Lord has been very gentle with me. I am broken. I know that very well. I am beginning to see that my brokenness is precisely what the Lord wants me to share with Him. 

I have locked it away because I am afraid of what the pain drives me to do. I get high. I lie and I hide. I seek fulfillment in the false intimacy of fornication and the futile facade of fantasy. I hurt people. I hurt myself. I have learned I must never let my heart run wild. 

This I ought to unlearn. I am made for love. Just because I have failed to love in the past does not mean that I am doomed to fail in the future. I am free to be faithful. There’s no need to run away from intimacy. I have been far too hard on my heart. The Lord wants to have her for His own, who am I to hide her from Him?

I am learning to let Him in. He has a far more merciful gaze than I do. He sees the havoc that sin has wrought in my heart and looks upon it with love. “I am what you have wanted all along,” He tells me, “Come, take Me to the places that hurt you the most.” 

Oh! how His love shines a light into those dark caverns, where parts of my heart have been carved away. By that light I begin to see clearly for the first time. I am not unlovable but unimaginably loved. I am not sick and depraved but wounded and saved. I am forgiven. 

I hear my Lord lovingly say to me, “I will build a beautiful dwelling place, here in the very halls of your heart that have been harrowed by sin. Behold, My son, I make all things new. I want to stay here with you.” 

If the Lord dwells in my heart, I need not fear to let her run wild and free. I need not hide my face from beauty. I need not flee from intimacy. I can trust my heart to love, I can let her have her say. I need not flog her for voicing her desires, for her King holds her fast and He sets her path. 

And so I will not hide my heart away any longer. I will let the Lord come in and do His work. I will let Him look at me. I will let Him love me. I will let Him love through me. My heart is His home.