The Treasure in the Field

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I didn’t know my heart needed to be broken into to be set free.

It makes sense though: ensconced in comforting cold rock lies a humble sparkle of gold that the great Finder knows and sets out to uncover.

I’ve yearned for You a long time. Since before time. And all those countless timeless aches of missing and hungering and begging for the comfort of Your embrace, as I stumbled down thorny dark paths searching for my place, seem now like a fairy-tale but for the fact that most of my life I’ve lived the pain of being utterly and indescribably stuck.

As a child, staring out into Mama’s hilly rock garden behind my favorite blue house, I recall gathering all my friends (which were the rocks and sticks of Mama’s garden, a battered old teddy bear whose eye was about to fall out, shells from the ocean); we’d explore the world that was there and it made me happy to see sunlight on water, rippling down green leaf and ants carrying a predator 10 times their size. But then, the Thought gonged. At first without afterthought, then repeatedly like a death knell in the pit of my young guts: “What if there’s nothing, Nothing, NOTHING, N.O.T.H.I.N.G. after this?”

My first remembered encounter with the true despair of my humanity: “From dust we came and to dust we shall return.” The world is a funny, strange place.

I grew up here, the world, and its thoughts began quickly to set like weeds in my soil. I fed my garden the way I knew how. With the fresh bottled water of pessimism and the choicest fertilizers of discontent, sprinkling her undergrowth with a spritz of faithlessness, that I know now reeks of death. I saw that no matter how much I tried to block out the clamor of hurtful noise from outside, it is a battlefield. and for a young soul who does not know or understand the food of love, to be fed on the food of world is rot to the flesh.

I’d found You though in many guises and forms throughout my wandering on this earth. You appeared in my Mama who’d strengthen me every night with the coconut oil shield of faith and strength as she taught me with her hands and her heart how true love is a daily fight for good, a choice every day to get up and prepare breakfast, walk me to school though her bones would wail and crack with every step, sneak in a roll up and chocolate cookies in my bag for lunch and buy us ice-cream on our bus ride home with her last $5.

Again, You were there in the blaring beauty of the bee that hovered into our apartment window every day around lunch time, visiting me as I offered fake honey from a bottle I took from you, little bee. You didn’t seem to care I was feeding you with the food you fed me. You came back time and again and my heart was elated.

And then You came to me as I recognized for myself the path I would not choose to walk down. That took a lot to be true. You kissed me in the gentle breeze as I walked away from the path I hadn’t willfully chosen but walked down anyway, and gave me a friend so strong and loving to help me believe it ok to desire something off the beaten path.

You were generous Love. You were my loyal unpretentious Friend. You were comfort and hope.

Tonight, in Your holy Silence, I understood, fleetingly, Your presence. I have found the treasure in the field, that neither time nor death can steal.

Pulsing eagerly beneath our caged physical bodies is the beat of all life that finds wonderful expression when the beat drops, the right rhythm pulls and the soul recognizes her spirit’s call in the physical, her Creator birthing in her immense unspoilt joy. All inhibition disappears, limbs dance to the sound of her first love.

You came to bring fire to the earth. But like a gentle breeze, Your love touches my brokenness and i choose surrender over fortification now.

Once, when I was a child and thought like a child, I believed the possibility of there being nothing else after we live this life here on earth. Now, returning to that time before time I recognize again, the reality of where I am, my place, and where I am going.

I am going to my Father’s House, which He has broken open for me when He rolled away the cold rock and allowed me to dance on the dust of death and behold His gentle golden glory.

I am surrendered.