Empty Wine.

Compassion is, at times, a difficult trait for me to access. I am afraid to confess, it is not a default position of my personality to empathise. While I can so eagerly and fiercely defend the helpless, I struggle to truly find pity for those who seem to be continually making decisions to land themselves in the hole. Not the victims, but the victim-minded. 

I understand how ignorant or unkind this may sound, and how unkindly I have acted in the past because of this disposition, and for that I have repented. Weakness is a most terrifying trait to me - that I would not have in myself the strength to act rightly and choose what is best for my health, spiritually, mentally and physically. Thus, I criticize in others what I am petrified I may, and often do, discover in the mirror. 

I have had my own wrestles with addiction. Not to a substance but to certain terrible habits and mindsets. I have sought relief from my insecurities and loneliness in food, in clothes, in affection, in achievement. I have known the emotional darkness of grief, and the weight of depression that shackles you inside of that pit. And somehow, over time, I have always found my way back. 

I hold my head up with pride at what I have triumphed over in my life - but hang my head with shame as recognise how guilty I am of believing it was by my own doing that I have been healed and rescued from the darkest places. The prayers I prayed in my stuck-ness, and the tears I have shed as I begged for salvation, are reminders that it was not I who pulled myself out of the deep waters I was drowning in. How could I have saved myself in those moments when I was barely even breathing? 

It was the mighty kindness of God that saved me from my year of hopeless grief. It was the grace of God to liberate me from my disordered relationship with my body. It was the goodness of Jesus to love me into loving myself after the disappointment of rejection. And still somehow I accuse those who are not yet on the other side of their battles, of the very weakness I too have carried. 

We have tasted God - some of us more evidently than others, whether in our prayers, our travels, our provision, our healing - and yet we forget him. We find ourselves eating dirt rather than drinking wine, trying to live and make it through without him, wondering why our hearts are throbbing with emptiness. It’s hard to believe that Jesus has truly set us free, when pain and sickness is wreaking havoc in our minds. It doesn’t feel possible to choose ‘life and life more abundant’. But I guess it’s not really up to us. It’s him who rescues - if we let him.