Love Wins

Since I was a little girl, I've always hated tension. It has made me impatient for endings, even when the endings were something unpleasant, like spankings. I have always hated to wait for things to come about, to sort themselves out. I always feel like I have to know, at least, what's coming. I have to turn up the heat, check under the band-aid, shake the carton...whatever it is that will make something, anything, happen. I sometimes apologize even when I don't think I've done something wrong, just to get to the end of a fight. Or pick a fight, when there's one hanging in the air. I read the endings of books and watch the last chapters of dramas so that I will have the patience to get through the middle.

I can wait for trains, and for people who are late, and for doctor appointments. I don't mind re-worked schedules, or students who shuffle into my classroom after the bell, or even avocados that take forever to ripen. But when there is something hanging that just won't be worked out, I feel antsy. Not just antsy. Maybe more like crazy. Every minute, I'm thinking, surely there is something I can do or say to shake things up a bit. Even if it makes things worse.

For other people, it just seems like tension is a way of life...something to be avoided if possible, like traffic, but normal and tolerable when it can't be got around easily. To me it feels cruel, unjust, and mean. If it lasts for too long, something turns sour in my heart, and deep inside I begin to question the love and goodwill of God toward me. Foolish.

Going back to lay my frustration and my hurt before him yet again tonight, I could feel something just giving up and shutting down. Not in the good way, nor in the overwhelmed way. Just the way it does when you start to lose hope. I felt like I had heard the answers too many times before. They were old and brittle and impotent. There was no change, no new perspective; nothing to relieve the tension. Resignation was taking the place of my sense of purpose.

Then quiet and soft as a whisper, I heard the voice of the Eternal One. He spoke right into my heart: "You already know the ending to this story. Remember? Love wins."

No reproach. No reminder to pull up my socks, to get my act together. No condemnation for my impatience and lack of vision. Just infinite tenderness and understanding and pity from the Father and Friend of my soul.

When I feel tired of the tension in my own story; when I feel like hatred and hurt and self keep winning and no one is calling them to account; when it seems impossible for God to turn this one to good; when the howling spectres of the unexplained crowd around - how good it is to remember that I've already read the ending to this one. And Love wins. It always does, no matter how complicated the way.

Back to the fray! He will use even this awful tension for something he calls Good. Dear, kind God - as ready to defend me as my own Father, but holding back...waiting with me for the ending of this story.