Hedged in with Thorns
If I had received the affirmation from my parents that I desired, if I had garnered the attention of young men I longed for, had heard the accolades I dreamed of from or found the acceptance I looked for… I do not know what might have been. It no longer matters.
After several important encounters with God recently, I have a new understanding and appreciation for God’s careful planning in my life..No! That’s too bland! What has happened is that suddenly I see that all the difficulties, disappointments, loneliness and rejection (real or imaginary) I have experienced my whole life, from the womb on, have been a hedge of thorns for me!
No, I do not have a “Sleeping Beauty complex!” There is only one Prince who can or will rescue me, and He is the Designer of the hedge. Suddenly I am able to see clearly what I have missed for the last sixty-four years!
Painful rejections, jibes, ridicule, loneliness, isolation — they have been neither unfortunate events that escaped God’s loving oversight, nor deliberate assaults on my heart that somehow made it around His defenses of me. All of the things I would have willingly cast aside as merely the painful consequences of living in a fallen world have been crafted for one thing: to preserve what God had made for Himself.
All I have ever wanted was to be loved unreservedly, enjoyed and celebrated! That is how He loves! His love has been my heart’s longing all my life! If He had allowed me to have the human substitutes I craved, I would not have sought for Him, and He has ever been seeking my exclusive love. All the challenges and difficulties of my life have been a hedge of thorns to keep me where I can hear His serenade of love!
Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns, …so that she cannot find her paths….Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.
– Hosea 2:6,14
I pray that the thorns in your life turn you toward the One who has ever been pursuing your heart.
Christi
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