Good Friday

I love Easter. If you asked me what my favorite holiday is, most of the year I'd say Easter. I get a little more conflicted around Christmas and New Years. Anyway, there is a reason why Easter is my favorite time of year and this Easter I have been remembering that day not too many years ago when it became my favorite holiday.

I was a rather broken woman at that point in my life. I remember lying in my bed in my apartment in Kenosha. I was alone. The most alone I had ever felt in my entire life. I had begun to hate that apartment and all that it represented - my life slowly and dangerously adrift as I sought to meet my own needs, live life my way, and only allow Jesus into the parts of my heart that didn't demand any kind of serious life change. My heart was no longer His but my own. I had pushed Him back to the farthest, smallest corner. Stuffed away so He wouldn't mess with the things I wanted desperately to cling to. But He didn't die to live in the farthest, smallest corner of my heart. He died to consume all of me and He fought, pursued, chased, pushed, and pressed on my heart until it broke....until I gave in and realized HE was all my heart really wanted, until I finally surrendered all.

I remember how dark the room was, the glow of my ipod, the way the lights from the parking lot made lines on the wall like a prison cell. I felt like I was in prison, my covers weighing down on me like a wet beach towel, or maybe the heaviness was my heart and not so much my covers? I remember wanting so desperately to cry out for Jesus, but I felt such shame. I was completely lost. I was once all His and somehow, somewhere I had pushed Him away and made my life mine.

I hope none of you have ever felt so far from Jesus you can't even find the words to speak to Him. I felt like a child who had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar - busted for my sin and now too ashamed to even speak to the One who had died to save me from it. 

I hope I never forget that moment, so totally empty all I could say was Jesus. In a whisper and almost a question as if to ask, Are you still there? Even when I pushed You away? But all my lips could form was one word, but it was all I needed to say...Jesus. Then the song, the piano, the guitar, those first few notes and those first few words....piercing through the cracks in my broken heart until they reached those far corners in the back. And just as soon as His Name left my lips, Jesus filled every part of my broken heart. 

And with those words and that moment He reminded me..."But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

I remember the tears that came and how wet my pillow got. How I played the song over and over. How my heart felt like it might burst. How He used my brokenness to open my eyes to my desperate need for Him. How with one whisper He came rushing in. How suddenly the weight of my sin, the price that He paid, the day that He died all became so incredibly real. It was for me, for me He died. My sin held Him there. This sin held Him there. And even when I pushed Him back into the farthest, smallest corner He never left. He waited, He pursued, He loved. Me. This selfish, broken, messed up girl. He loves!

And with a whisper and a song, just a few days before Easter He rescued a lost little girl. She finally let go and He held fast. Oh how I love Him, Savior and Friend!

Up Calvary's mountain one dreadful morn

Walked Christ my Savior, weary and worn

Facing for sinners death on the cross

That He might save them from endless loss

Blessed Redeemer, Precious Redeemer

Seems now I see Him on Calvary's tree

Wounded and bleeding, for sinners pleading

Blind and unheeding, dying for me

"Father, forgive them," my Savior prayed

Even while His lifeblood flowed fast away

Praying for sinners while in such woe

No one but Jesus ever loved so

Oh how I love Him, Savior and friend

How can my praises ever find end

Through years unnumbered on Heaven's shore

My songs shall praise Him forevermore