You Love Me As You Find Me

I am a past-oriented person. I reflect on things that have already happened because they cannot be changed, they can be analyzed as they are, and I can make adjustments based on those things that are now permanent. 

At the end of 2019, Spotify sent an email out to their subscribers inviting them to reflect on their listening habits over the past decade. Here are some of my stats. I think they’re cool (but I get if you want to skip them). 

For the decade, and 2019, my top artist was Hillsong UNITED. 

I invested 8,236 minutes, or 137.26 hours, OR 1.56% of 2019 listening to music and podcasts on Spotify. Fifteen of those hours were spent listening to Hillsong UNITED, and most of that was the “People” album. It is that good. 

“People” was not an album full of “worship” songs you could also sing to your cat. “People” took some of the difficult issues and thoughts we face walking with God, and framed them as anthems for us to sing when a church sanctuary feels like anything but a safe place or refuge, or when we feel like our sin has put us in a place that God cannot reach. But they didn’t stop there, because these songs also remind us that God is bigger than the gaps and his grace has saved us, and his capacity makes us able to get up and face life in a God-glorifying way each day, even when it seems like you’re playing hide and seek with darkness.

That’s what kept me coming back to this album all year. If you passed me anytime while I was out by myself, there’s a good chance you thought I was going to wreck the car because, as we say in Christianese, I was having church in my car. 

My hands were stretched wide, pounding my steering wheel with tears in my eyes, desperately crying out to God, feeling found in the lyrics that found me where I was; that still find me where I am.  I’m begging my heart to believe that God is good even here. Yes, even here “when all these starts start feeling like these ends, like the world is unraveling and I’m bound to come undone.” I’m singing to my broken heart, “There is a Shepherd, a Priest, there is a Comforter who comforts me” (“Starts and Ends”).

I could write on and on about how each song has a set of lyrics that found me at a different point in what turned out to be a difficult year, but I’m choosing one song, “As You Find Me”. 

“As You Find Me” sings over the parts of my soul that have struggled to ever feel known, found, and wanted as I am. I have heard that Jesus is my friend, that he calls me friend; but friendship doesn’t feel like something I’d like to experience with Jesus, because my human relationships/friendships have all gone something like this:

“If you want so and so to like you, don’t do that. They think that’s weird. Be more like this.”

“You’re unapproachable.” That was meant to be an insult. I was caught halfway up the side aisle of my grandfather’s church by a church member who told me this. 

“You’re crazy/too wild/hyper.” Hearing someone called this still grinds me to a halt.

“You’re too loud,” and then later “You’re quiet.” Ummm… confused.

“Don’t say that. Sure, it’s true, but no one wants to hear that.” 

“You’re not wife material.” That was a difficult way to end a relationship, but it was how one ended, and that wrecked me because, to a woman who has only tried to love and care for a man with all she had, that’s the ultimate way to say “You’re not good enough for me,” and maybe not good enough for anyone else either. 

When you hear such things said often  enough, even if you know they’re not true, it’s human nature to start “trying it on” so to speak.  If you’re like me, sometimes you try something on to see if it fits, to see if it makes sense with your convictions or beliefs; and then you either adopt it or throw it out -- but what’s the point in throwing it out if it’s already how people see you?

I think you get the point: if my human friendships have been bent to change how God created me, then surely God doesn’t accept me as I am, flaws, brutal honesty, privacy, anxieties, voice, and all. I’m alone, and it’s not like God wants anything to do with me, either. 

Which leads me to where God has been working on me lately. 

That God doesn’t want me as I am is a lie.

God doesn’t want us to exchange the truth about him for a lie, and that he doesn’t want me as I am is a lie. 

I’ve been reading Higher Power Has a Name by Cavanaugh James, and I’ve been going through a series of statements of Agreement about who God says I am with Jess Connolly (author of You Are The Girl for the Job: Daring to Believe the God Who Calls You). This past week, I was reintroduced to how God has called me friend and that our relationship with God is not like the relationships we have on earth. They’re meant to be a direct reflection of how God wants to be relational with us, but we humans are super bad at relationships. 

Nearly every relationship we’re in is broken in some way because we’re looking for someone to fill a void of some kind. And then, when we no longer have that void, or the void-filler stops filling our void because they too have a void, we want to drop them in the relational dumpster and start looking for someone or something else to fill us -- when God has only ever been the one meant to, and able to do that. 

By no means am I saying that we should swear off all relationships because we are meant to help each other and draw together, even more so as the time of Jesus’s return comes ever closer (Hebrews 10:25). Jesus had his 12 with whom he kept close company, but many other women and men as well stayed with him and communed with him, and we are meant to do the same, to do this messy life with messy people who are saved by the all-encompassing grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

But first, we need Jesus. We need to submit to him and recognize that he is here with us and he is for us. He is Immanuel, God with Us. So when he asks us to lay down ourselves, we shouldn’t fear going all in, because even when the world can’t accept us and we feel more misunderstood with each breath we take, he wants to know us. He does know us. And He wants us. He wants you. He wants to know you. He wants to be your friend. 

He doesn’t tell me I have to do that for him to care for me and be my friend and hang out with me. My weirdness, my energy, my wild, my quiet, my loud, nothing is weird to him. It’s part of his Father imprinted on us (Genesis 1).

He doesn’t tell me I’m unapproachable. He keeps coming back. There’s nowhere I can go to escape his presence. There’s not a mountaintop or valley that he won’t through walk with me; so when they say I’m unapproachable, he’ll still approach me. He’ll still reach out. 

He wants to hear my deepest thoughts. He wants me to call out to him, and he will listen. If He listened to Jesus, his Son (John 11:42), surely he hears me too. 

“You’re not wife material.” You are my bride. I have saved you and redeemed you. You are my bride, and you are holy (2 Corinthians 11, Revelation 19:7-9). 

Why then would we hold back from someone who won’t make us change before he’ll be near us, who won’t leave us when we are at our lowest and in need of someone to carry us through the day because our souls are weary? 

Know that as I write this, I’m still down here fighting these thoughts and I’m not saying that I don’t have insecurities because it seems like I’m at the very start of it, but I’ll leave you with the bridge and chorus for this song. If this is something you struggle with, too, give the song a listen (or ten), and cry out to God. Trust he will be there.

“If You want my heart
I won't second guess
‘Cause I need Your love
More than anything
I’m in
I’m Yours
Your love’s too good to leave me here
Your love’s too good to leave me here.

—
 
And I know I don’t deserve this kind of love
Somehow this kind of love is who You are
It’s a grace I could never add up
To be somebody You still want
But somehow
You love me as You find me”

God’s love, grace, peace, and deep friendship be with You.