I am not a Prostitute

So Wednesday was a fun day for me.

I sat down with two of my supervisors, in two separate meetings, both of which involved me getting snotty-nosed and drippy, as they called me into deeper places and point-blank called out some areas in which my understanding of myself, of God and of God's relationship to me was fundamentally as nutty as a fat squirrel in autumn. Without going into too much detail, here's the basic gist of my broken understanding:

I do not think that I am intrinsically a delight to God or to other people. I think I am prized and valued and of worth for what I can do, rather than for who I am.

It's the difference between being a prostitute or a lover. A wife or a concubine.

One is loved and valued for who she is, for her relationship with her spouse or lover, her character, her personality, her strengths and weaknesses, through good times and bad.

The other is loved and valued for the commodity that she provides. She is dispensable. She is replaceable. And her worth is largely determined on how good she is at her role.

And, all too often, I live as though I am a prostitute rather than lover, both in relationship to God and in relationship to others...

• valued for what I can do, what I can provide, how I can care well for the needs of the other, rather than for who I truly am
• disposable and replaceable
• weakness is right out, vulnerability close behind it, because those are places in which you expose yourself as incapable, inept, and under-qualified (by proxy, undeserving and undesirable). If I am to be weak or vulnerable, it needs to be well-processed, and neatly packaged.

It's false. It's broken. And I know that. But that is the place that I always seem to return to...

In the words of my friend Carolyn, I've hit my wall again.

But it feels like God is saying, "No more. This wall is not the stopping point..."

A few months ago, my friend Daniel prayed Isaiah 62 over me, and I feel like these words really resonate for me at this point in time (moreso than they did when he prayed them) (vs 2,4,12):

The nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory; you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will bestow...

No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah (my delight is in her) and your land Beulah (married); for the LORD will take delight in you, and your land will be married...

They will be called the Holy People, the Redeemed of the LORD; and you will be called Sought After, the City No Longer Deserted..."

God seems to be saying to me:

• I long to give you a new name, a true name.
• I have called you daughter and delight; stop living as though you were a harlot.
• I call you my bride, married to me; stop returning to the harem as if you were a concubine.

At the end of the day, I am not a prostitute.

Jesus' invitation to me is to allow him to be my lover, to radically pursue me, to delight in me, for whom I am, rather than what I can do. And that makes me really uncomfortable because it feels so... intimate... so foreign... so inconceivable... but I think that's his invitation.

That's why he calls me Beloved. Delight.

Now I just need to learn how to live in that place, rather than return to the harem.