A spiritual update

In some other post, Gentle Reader, I will tell you the nitty-gritty of life with lymphedema. But for today, let me give you the spiritual update. I had thought that losing all my female parts would empty me, making me a fit vessel for Christ somehow.  I seemed to be just hitting my stride when the arms started to swell, and I slowly came to the realization that this wasn't temporary, nor trivial.  The physical stuff is inconvenient, but the spiritual shrapnel was worse.  I found myself disoriented, angry, frustrated, feeling tricked.  I wallowed.  But the catch of it is, wallowing is not all it's made out to be.  In the end I was no happier, and felt alienated from God. I ran across a description that fit me perfectly this morning:

My tongue has had a razor edge and my eyes have rolled haughty and my neck has been stiff and graceless and I have lived the filth ugly, an idolator, a glutton, and a grace thief who hasn't had time for the thanks.
~ Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts p.116

The most amazing thing is that in the midst of all my fruitless rebellion and self-focus, somehow beyond reasonableness, God continues not only to love me, but to send me tangible tokens of that love, And as thick-headed and hard-hearted as I am, even I, like that prodigal long ago, eventually get the point: you can choose to keep wallowing there in the filth, or you can live over here in His love. So, I again, and not for the last time, repent, and am grateful. There is no mire so thick, no pit so deep, that his love cannot reach me there. And He never tires of me.  How amazing is that?

Believer, come near the cross this morning, and humbly adore the King of glory as having once been brought far lower, in mental distress and inward anguish, than any one among us; and mark His fitness to become a faithful High Priest, who can be touched with a feeling of our infirmities. Especially let those of us whose sadness springs directly from the withdrawal of a present sense of our Father's love, enter into near and intimate communion with Jesus. Let us not give way to despair, since through this dark room the Master has passed before us. Our souls may sometimes long and faint, and thirst even to anguish, to behold the light of the Lord's countenance: at such times let us stay ourselves with the sweet fact of the sympathy of our great High Priest. Our drops of sorrow may well be forgotten in the ocean of His griefs; but how high ought our love to rise! Come in, O strong and deep love of Jesus, like the sea at the flood in spring tides, cover all my powers, drown all my sins, wash out all my cares, lift up my earth-bound soul, and float it right up to my Lord's feet, and there let me lie, a poor broken shell, washed up by His love, having no virtue or value; and only venturing to whisper to Him that if He will put His ear to me, He will hear within my heart faint echoes of the vast waves of His own love which have brought me where it is my delight to lie, even at His feet for ever.

~C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, Morning, April 12.