pure hearts and other related matters

SM No. 11 // contemplations on a love story youtube video and my past habit of 'man-walking'

A week and one day ago from publishing this post, I watched a video about how this man met his wife.¹

Curtesy of Pinterest.

As a single Christian woman, I’ve watched a fair amount of these. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’m a romantic and I love happily ever afters, especially with two people who love God. With this particular video though, there was something different. While other YouTube influencer couples talk about how they met, fell in love, and married each other, focusing specifically on their relationship, I found that this man talked especially about his walk with God, aside from his wife. That caught my attention for a couple reasons.

(1) Because there didn’t seem to be any branding to this video. It was real.

(2) Christian marriage, I’ve learned, isn’t really about Christian marriage. What I mean by that is: marriage, dating, and engagement books have their places. I’m very grateful for them. But what’s more important is that a right relationship with God first take place in an individual’s heart. We don’t have time to get into that right now.

I appreciated that this man seemingly had it down pat that what mattered more than his wife and branding this video as “How I Married the Woman of My Dreams and How You Can Too”, was his personal pursuit of God, and more specifically, God’s pursuit of him.

For those of you who have read my article detailing my gut reaction to John Eldredge and Brent Curtis’s book The Sacred Romance (include link here to said article), I’ve been on a journey of rediscovering not so much how much I love God, but of how much God loves me. Like Clint Snyder (creator of said YouTube video), it’s taken me years after becoming an ardent follower of Christ to wake up to how much I matter to God. It’s funny, actually. Feels sort of silly to say it so long after accepting Jesus’ pursuit of my heart at four years old—it’s been almost a decade since that precious moment. It’s so commonplace, it feels untrue.

I matter to God.

When I think about it, say it out loud, it sounds arrogant, selfish.

Clint details how he meets his wife, Ellie on a mission’s trip. He explains that he was interested in pursuing her but she didn’t want to commit to a relationship at the time, although she mentioned that she would be open to staying in contact. He says that he felt a great weight upon him to treat Ellie with respect and with love that had no expectations of a return.

Later on, he discusses his lack of selfless love toward this woman he wanted to be with—that it quickly became about gaining something from the relationship—for him, it was being seen. He wanted her to really see him.

Suddenly, what to me was an impersonal, feel-good story, became very real in my heart. I began to pay attention, sitting up rather than slouching over my laptop with my chin in my hand.

Over the past several years of my transition from childhood to becoming a young adult, I’ve never once acknowledged in honesty, boldness, and without remorse just how much I desired to really be known, understood, and to belong somewhere or to someone. It was a vulnerable need in which it slowly became something of an internal struggle, because I never admitted it to even myself, let alone anyone else.

Instead of realizing it as a need and figuring out how to process it appropriately as well as care for the need, it morphed into a battle that I waged inside. Rather than seeing this desire as a companion and part of my humanity, I fought against it constantly.

Listen here, I am a religious woman. I don’t need anyone or anything, aside from God. If I never find community, work that I’m passionate about, a loving spouse, it’ll all be dandy because I don’t need anyone. There are monks and nuns who live peaceably and alone, considering nothing and nobody but God [not completely accurate]. Why can’t I? Tons of people have less than I do, so why am I complaining?

The many arguments resembled the message above—that I was sinful or partial to worldliness because of my longings—although they differed in grammar and content. At last, it went from me fighting the war of desire, to me asking God to quell it entirely.

God, if I can’t have this object of affection [fill in the blank], what’s the point of me desiring at all? Take it away, God! It’s too great a burden to bear, and it makes me feel empty and lonely inside.

Of course, God certainly did not strip away desire from me—that would be asking him to dehumanize me, which would be the opposite of loving. So I continued to struggle—still do. After quite a bit of tugging at my heartstrings, Jesus was slowly revealing something to me, which somehow rose to another level of harmony when I began to wake up to just how needy I really am. Not only am I needy, but it’s actually what makes me a human being requiring a Divine Figure.

Curtesy of Pinterest.

We are made to belong, love, and be loved.

Ahhh. It felt like cold rain washing away the grime and heat of a sweaty summer day, as I allowed the pure truth envelope my heart. Seemingly, a knotty battle inside began to resolve itself.

I am needy! I want to belong! I want to be loved! I want passion in my life!

Inwardly my heart leapt! Is this what freedom feels like? To actually pay attention to and accept your heart’s inner workings?

Clint talks about how without God’s perfect and unadulterated love, his ambitions and desires were ugly and selfish. Although I have some qualms over the wording he used, I got what he was communicating. We are quick to want, to receive, to request from others, but not so to give, sacrifice, and lay our own immediate ambitions down.

He spoke about his inquiring of God to show him what pure love is in walking it out, asked God to provide him with a pure heart.

“I realized that his acceptance was all I really needed.”

Unless there is a realization of a need and a subsequent request to fill that need, there won’t be anywhere for the answer to go nor will there be a chance for us to receive. As I’ve begun walking along this journey of living life out of the fullness of my heart, part of that path has led me to walk toward the fulfilling and hopeful love of Jesus Christ. This isn’t a Jesus vs. my neediness battle, but rather: He sees me, understands me, wants to rescue me—completely, with nothing in return for his boundless love.

A woman’s got needs.

True, we do. We all do, men and women alike. Union between the heart of God and our own is what brings together our needs and his provision. You have not because you asked not.

What if we did have because we did ask?

What kind of freedom and love could we be filled to overflowing with?

Create in me a clean heart, O God.

In our recognition of our deep need to be loved, understood, and to belong, by extension, we pray what David did, in his fallen state. Even as David wept over the horrors of his sins committed against his members of his own nation that he was lord over, we cry out to God in (1) repentance and (2) hope.

Firstly in repentance because we see the need we are in and rather than choose vulnerability and openness before God, we turn to other measures. John/Brent writes in chapter one of The Sacred Romance,

Starting very early, life has taught us all to ignore and distrust the deepest yearnings of our heart. Life, for the most part, teaches us to suppress our longing and live only in the external world where efficiency and performance are everything…something else is wanted from us other than our heart, which is to say, that which is most deeply us…If we are wanted, we are often wanted or what we can offer functionally…So we learn to offer only those parts of us that are approved, living out a carefully crafted performance to gain acceptance from those represent life to us. We divorce ourselves from our heart and begin to live a double life. (pg. 6)

In other words, rather than joy in the acceptance, love, and belonging we have in Christ, we find ways to achieve a temporary feeling of fulfillment through a boost of adrenaline or dopamine. Forgiveness is a need, just like many other things. In order to fulfill that need, there is first a humble admission of a fault.

Secondly, hope, because a pure heart entails a freedom to love with no expectation to impair the action. Our hearts are pure, our love now selfless, as Clint describes in his video, can you imagine the freedom to love from that posture of fulfillment? What would it be like to live from our the overflow of a heart that knows it finds it’s belonging and known-ness in the One who pursues our entire being, no matter our condition? How would our relationships change? With what new eyes would be see our daily tasks and ordinary jobs? Love is not like a pair of rose-colored glasses—it is an awakening to how life really is.

When we are humble enough to ask God for us to clean up our heart, we are asking for him to pour out his life-force and Divine affection into it, that we may be fully awake and alive. What a tragedy that we would ever tide ourselves over with addictions when there is abundance in the Source of existence surrounding us, available in all particulars of everyday.

Camping out here for a moment before I conclude—I want to speak directly to those personalities very much like my own who seek love and belonging through a person. For one reason or another, I began distrusting my own heart and it’s whispers, instead deciding to girl boss it through life. At this time, I liked to walk into environments like a powerhouse. My friend referred to my habit, affectionately, as man-walking. Indeed, I gave off the masculine energy of ‘do it yourself’, and ‘I don’t need anybody’. I wanted to be able to dictate when I felt sadness, loneliness, and the other more ‘weak’ emotions, while at the same time being in control of my passions, longings, and wants. Dial one up, dial the other down.

From this place of control, there was a deeper root: a fear that if somebody just saw all of who I was, they would not accept me; a fear many have today.

Since I’m a born Lover, and always will be, this ‘taming’ of my heart was downright poisonous and left me utterly bereft inside. Unfortunately, I’m still undoing the damage that it has left on my relationships with God, others, and myself.

For my Lovers out there, your ability to love another person with sincere (dare I say, severe) loyalty, and to champion causes with passion burning in your bosom, is a rare and lovely trait. It’s not too much. You have the ability to see God in a way many others may not be able to, on first encounter. Reserve your loyalties for the Lover who chases and pursues without pause or consideration, and let hope rule your passion, that there will come a day when the Feast of the Lamb is laid before us, as we celebrate the consumation of our marriage to Christ himself.

Perhaps I write this only for myself, if not for everyone else. But I felt I needed to say a short word, either way.

Lord, create in me a pure heart.

Let there be no expectation of return, yet for hope to live on in my being.

Lord, create in me a pure heart.

Let my soul find delight in loving because you radiate your love in my heart.

Lord, create in a me a pure heart.

Let those dear to me be recipients of boundless love since I am a recipient of your Divine compassion for me.

Most days, I find myself seeking more eagerly for affection rather than to give affection. It’s a work in progress. But thank God he will do the work that must be done, in the end. It’s a journey, after all.

Weekly journal prompt

Reflect on each major facet of your life: work, school, play, relationships, church, etc. Consider how and where God is inviting you to include him in specific parts of your life. If you invite him in, how may that impact the way you show love in your relationships, in work, church, and daily tasks?

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Check out my other post on desire.

1. Here is the video.