i don't want to need you

It's drizzly today. Dark and gray and the kind of chill that gets into your bones, with the whole world a wash of September green accented by splashes of bright watercolor flowers enjoying a few more weeks of life before October's frost.

I spent some time with a precious friend last week - one who is unafraid of asking the depth of questions that I need to answer, one who speaks such understanding that I find myself briefly relieved from the loneliness that usually follows me. And there, in the oasis of community I had been craving, I met something unexpected in my heart: anger.

I choked up a little when I was talking to her, and hated myself for it. My shoulders stiffened when she asked to pray for me. All I wanted was to take back all the honesty I had spoken, stuff it deep inside my turtle shell, and return - what on earth?! - to my lonely state.

I was angry. Angry that I had let myself out in the open, vulnerable. Angry that I had needed to. Angry that I had needed anyone.

I don't want to need you.

I don't want to need prayer or sympathy or empathy or embrace. I don't want to break my poker face. I don't want to confront the darkness and pain and desperate, desperate need.

This is pride at its finest, my friends - hidden beneath layers of something as innocent as loneliness, only to be discovered when a place of honesty is finally reached, and discovered as the ugly grace-rejecting sin that it is.

I want to retract into the fortress of "independence" I've built around my heart and blame it all on loneliness, blame someone else for not making me feel important or included or loved, watch others from afar from a cold seat of judgment because I am walking a graceless path. I don't want to need community. I don't even want to need God.

And grace cannot be given from a heart that won't receive it.

I think of Jesus' parable about the prodigal son, who squandered his inheritance and profaned his father's name and yet was graciously welcomed home when he humbly repented - and then I think of the older brother could only look on, angry, jealous, and judgmental, because he was blind to the riches of grace that were already his for the taking.

But [the older son] became angry and was not willing to go in; and his father came out and began pleading with him. But he answered and said to his father, "Look! For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours; and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends; but when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him." And he said to him, "Son, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live, and was lost and has been found."  - Luke 16:28-32

Two sons, two hearts - one desperate, needy, and humbled to receive his father's grace, which was lavished on him in response. The other proud, cold-hearted, and closed off from every blessing he might have claimed if only he had been willing to receive.

I don't want to need community, but I do.

I don't want to need God, but I do.

I don't want to need grace, but I desperately do.

Thank God it is abundantly available to me at His feet.

But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, "God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble." Submit therefore to God. . . . Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.  - James 4:6-7a, 8a